For Three
by Ithilwen K-Bane
Summary: How many days can Percy and Annabeth last in Tartarus without water, help or a plan? How are Jason and the others going to defeat the next giant without a god to help? When things get dark enough, some secrets get easier to see. There is something that Poseidon never told Percy. He was better off not knowing. Sequel to Next of Kin. Set after MoA, written before HoH.
1. Three

Percy, Annabeth, Jason and their friends are copyright R. Riordan.

Yes, this is a continuation of _Mark of Athena_ but it's also a bit of an experiment. Most of the scenes are already written and just need to be put in the right order. I wish I could hammer everything out for another month but something rather important is set to happen on October 8.

This contains spoilers for _Mark of Athena_ and books preceding. Because I have not read _House of Hades_ yet, nothing in here can be called a spoiler, but I might have guessed correctly in a few places. One plot element is based the cover art. You do not need to read "Next of Kin" to understand this story.

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An undulating green light filled the corridor, blazing and dying against what remained of the shell-studded walls. Greek fire. Greek fire and a lot of it. He'd been here before.

Ahead of him, he saw a woman with flowing dark hair and a funny looking crown or tiara. Her feet touched the floor lightly, anchored by the weight of her pearl-embossed armor, but from the way she moved, he could tell she was underwater. Weirder, she didn't seem to _stay_ a woman. Sometimes she appeared to have a rippling octopus body or even the elegant, knifelike tail of a massive eel. This was an immortal who was making no effort to hold on to one visible form. What had his father said that time? He reflected the state of his realm? Wherever this woman belonged, it had downed three triple-caffeinated Big Gulps, stayed up for three nights straight and then read some angry Internet threads.

As his head cleared, she turned around, and he could see that her crown was actually two funny horns like lobster claws. Percy nearly jumped as he recognized her. Somehow, her eyes managed to blaze despite being black as basalt. She was Amphitrite. And she was pissed.

"You said you would never bring _any_ of them here. You said I would never have to look at them."

He turned to see who she was talking to, then felt his throat tighten. Poseidon was worn to the bone. His armor hung off him like a hermit crab's shed skin, and his wrists were thin and bent where they grasped the shaft of his trident.

"It was an emergency, my love. He was injured, and I needed to hear what he had to say for the war effort. I could not leave, so I brought him here."

Amphitrite leaned back, hands on her hips. Weird as it was, Percy recognized that look as the same one his mom had always given Gabe Ugiliano whenever he was lying his ass off. Gabe usually lasted about thirty seconds before either trying to change the subject or coming up with a more convincing story. Poseidon beat Gabe's record by a good minute.

"I wanted you to see him," he admitted.

"Why?"

"I had to know ...if I was imagining something."

"You had to know if you were imagining something," she repeated in a pitch-perfect I-am-not-buying-this that would have made any born Manhattanite proud.

There was a sound outside, and Poseidon's bony fingers tightened around his trident. He turned toward the noise, fixing the ravening sea serpent with eyes sharper than a knife. The water around the trident's tines boiled and a thick, angry humming shook the shaft. Amphitrite moved with a practiced grace, placing her hand on her husband's shoulder with a look of intense concentration, and Percy knew that she was adding her power to his own. He had a sudden flashback to Hazel following his lead as they'd fought back-to-back during the invasion of New Rome. They'd needed no words. There was a blaze of green energy interspersed with dark threads, like a tornado studded with flint shards, and soon the serpent was nothing but shreds of scale and gristle settling to the sea floor.

Amphitrite stepped away, and the two resumed their argument as if nothing had happened.

"When you met him, what did you see?" asked Poseidon.

She shot Poseidon a look that should have speared him straight into the wall. Anyone but a god would have cowered like a scared guinea pig. Even though he'd figured out it was a dream, Percy suddenly wasn't feeling invisible enough.

"Another of your bastards, my lord, and another broken promise," she answered pointedly. "Have you any further indignities before I return to the battle?"

Poseidon stared at her silently for a moment and then raised his chin in what must have been a dismissal, because Amphitrite lifted her own weapon and hurried away, seeming to be a woman with a harpoon, a mermaid with a spear, a thresher shark with a lashing tail. For the moment, there was no one to see him, and Poseidon closed his eyes, looking wearier than Percy had ever seen him. Somehow, his father had lost something, and Percy didn't think it was the war.

Poseidon's face was unreadable when he opened his eyes. He pulled in a breath and let out a defeated whisper, saying the name—

"Percy, _wake up!_"

And as his eyes opened and consciousness flooded back, he realized that not all of the crushing doom that had permeated his memory had come from the betrayal in Amphitrite's eyes or the fact that his dad had looked like he'd gone twelve rounds with Aqua-Rocky.

Percy almost choked on the air. Every breath seemed to suck at him from the inside, pulling on his will, his identity. A moment of panic, muskeg panic, stiffened his muscles as he realized he couldn't move his arms.

Annabeth was practically on top of him, Riptide braced in both hands as she sawed hard at something pale and giving. "Is that spider silk?" he asked, but it was wrong. Even in his head, it sounded wrong.

"Cushioned our fall," she said quickly, but the words felt off, like a stranger's hands. Percy blinked and saw that she _looked_ wrong. She was Annabeth and everything in his head told him that she _should_ look familiar.

He didn't have time to wonder, hearing a noise off to the side. The voice sent a chill through his already cryogenic bones. _You will come too_, it had said, only now it was screaming. At first he couldn't make out what was happening. At first it looked like a woman riding a round ball studded with spikes. As his eyes adjusted, he saw she was waving her arms around as something lunged at her from the shadows, something that seemed to be made of teeth. And there was more than one of them.

One of the shadow-mouths clamped down on Arachne's fourth leg and there was a sound like a buffetgoer sucking the meat out of a crab leg. Arachne shrieked and beat at it with her human arms until another one, with the spiked feet of a grasshopper and a round mouth like a lamprey met her left arm with a hideous squelching sound.

"I will suffocate you in webs and feed you to my children!" Arachne threw back her head cried out. "I will weave a tapestry to commemorate your demise. I will spin your shroud!" Her voice broke on a sob as something with claws hooked into one side of her face. "My children! Where are you?"

"Annabeth, what are those?" he said.

"I... I'll have you free in a minute," Annabeth whispered.

Percy looked at her carefully. Gray eyes, blond hair, but...

This was a trick. He was sure of it. He was in Tartarus and this was a trick.

"Hold still or I'll cut your hands off," she said.

He leaned toward her, eyes on Riptide. Whatever this thing had done with the real Annabeth, it _was_ cutting him free. He could grab the sword and turn it to dust in five, four, three...

It stopped moving. Turned its head toward his face. Imitation human eyes, empty as the pit, watched him as if wondering which part to eat first. It was as hungry as those things in the dark and Percy knew down in his guts that Annabeth was trussed up in some cave thinking that he would never find her in time.

Its free hand reached toward him as if to pull his soul from his body, and Percy flinched back as fingers as cold as the Styx clamped down on his cheek.

Dirt and calluses. Nails and a pulse. This was the hand he'd held a hundred times (and had smacked him a hundred more times than he'd deserved). When he looked back at her, she hadn't changed. Not a hair of the way she looked had changed, but the meaning was back. He could see fear and hope fighting each other in eyes that were definitely _her_ eyes.

He realized that she knew. She knew what he'd thought and what he'd been going to do about it.

She licked her lip. "Better now?"

"Yes."

"I have to let go to cut you loose."

He nodded. She went back to work on the web strings, and it was as if a film fell over his eyes. She seemed like a copy of herself, weak and warped and poisonous. _It's only a trick_, Percy told himself as she freed his leg. Annabeth breathed in through her mouth, the tip of one canine showing like a fang.

He tried to shake it off, instead watching Arachne. She was still moving, but he could only tell because of the way the mass of predators around her bunched and recoiled.

"Why are they attacking her?" he asked. Arachne was one of Gaea's crew. She'd hidden the Parthenos and tried to kill Annabeth. She should have gotten a hero's welcome.

"She was human," Annabeth said quickly. "She still has a mortal soul and..." Annabeth breathed in as if the words were hurting her. "It's an artist's soul. She's capable of great beauty, great patience. I think they want to destroy that," Annabeth said with almost no sound, answering the question in his mind.

"But then why did they—_behind you_." Annabeth whirled, bringing Riptide up just in time to stop a rough-scaled creature with a single long, clawed foreleg from latching on to her neck from behind. It was a direct hit, but it only bounced off the edge of the blade, making a sound like a giant cockroach. The creature rose to its stunted hind feet and made toward them again. Percy yanked at the web behind him and felt it give partway around his left arm. He wasn't sure what he meant to do but he wasn't going to let these two chunks of evil duke it out. He shook himself. One chunk of evil and Annabeth.

Annabeth turned quickly, slicing through the last of the web strands. Percy snatched Riptide out of her hands and brought it down on the beast just as it lunched toward her again. It bounced off again with no damage. Percy swallowed. Arachne's screams had given way to muffled groaning. He didn't want to know what would happen when the rest of the pack got bored.

"Percy," Annabeth murmured, touching his arm so that the words were more than noise. "The doors. We have to get to the doors of death and..."

And they had to be strong enough to actually make a difference once they got there. And they had no food, no help, no idea where to go and only one weapon between them, which wasn't doing much good anyway.

Their eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding. They ran.

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"You knew." The voice was smooth and heavy as a sandbar.

A man turned around and smiled. "Actually I didn't," he said. The face was familiar, and the short black beard, but the statue in Cabin One hadn't shown the elegant smirk in those electric blue eyes.

The air cleared and he could tell that they were in the grandest room he'd ever seen, but the place looked a bit scattered. There was a scaffold against one wall, and several cyclops-sized tools were stacked neatly in the corner. It was hard to tell the time of day this high up, but judging from the light, it might have been the repair crew's lunch break. Zeus had been adjusting the armrest of his refurbished throne, moving an elegant crescent that looked like it was meant as a holder for something heavy. The other man had the same black hair, but his skin was tanner. He looked a bit wilder. And he was holding back anger like a sea wall held back the tide.

"I was as surprised as you were, Poseidon," Zeus admitted. "But it had been a very busy day. _Some of us_ had been fighting Typhon since the Pacific Northwest, and he gets distracting after the first few time zones. That doesn't leave me much energy to wonder about how my brother's children might react to a three-day battle against the Titans."

He watched Poseidon's eyes narrow. The sea god seemed to look straight into Zeus, but instead of organs and bones and nerves, there was courage, ego and craftiness, all slipping against each other like tongues of the same fire. The patterns moved quickly, but it was like Latin. He knew the language without being taught, and what it said was—

"Stop that," Zeus said darkly. "Don't come accusing me and then try to read my soul without my permission. You're not even good at it."

"You're lying," Poseidon said simply.

Zeus held Poseidon's gaze and it was clear why he was king over his two older brothers. Poseidon was powerful, but there was something unstoppable in Zeus' will. Best and greatest. He was not beaten, could not be beaten. He answered because he'd decided to answer.

"I suspected," he admitted. "I didn't _know_ your son would refuse and I would have kept my word if he hadn't. But it truly worked out for the best. If we were going to have a new god, we'd be better off with Athena's girl, set her up as a goddess of builders or the like. It sounds as though she did as much of the work as Perseus did anyway."

"Then why the subterfuge?"

"There was none. Your son was worthy and I rewarded him."

"You practically dared him not to take godhood."

"I didn't need to," Zeus said flatly. The sky god showed a half-suppressed grin, and he could believe he was Athena's only parent. He _loved_ letting people know he knew something they didn't. "He won that battle—_survived_ that battle because he had the blessing of the River Styx, a force so powerful that even its name cannot be broken." He laced his fingers together as if addressing a child. "And what did he need to survive the Styx?"

Poseidon's lips parted. "His connection to mortality."

Zeus nodded. "You're catching on. No one who wasn't profoundly attached to the human condition could have defended Manhattan, at least not the way he managed it. Someone like that does not leave mortality behind lightly." Zeus settled something in the armrest socket. It looked like a metal cylinder with caps on both ends, and it seemed to thrum with energy. "It came back to bite me, if that makes you feel any better. I thought would use his reward undo the damage to his human city." Well that had been a bit short-sighted. Why would someone like Percy waste his one wish asking the gods to do something that people could do for themselves?

"He spent his reward on something that he'd been conditioned to want, not on something that he should have realized was better. Takes after his sire, I suppose."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that your boy _thinks_ like a mortal. They know they're doomed, so they try to find ways to continue to affect the world after they die. For some of them it's having children or conquering empires. For others it's building monuments." He looked out the window to a new statue of Ares, still covered in scaffolding. "And the thing Perseus asked for..." Zeus twisted his lip and trailed off. From what he'd heard, there had been many choices made the day Kronos had attacked Manhattan. Luke Castellan's choice might have been the one foretold in the prophecy, but Percy's would preserve Olympus as well; he'd set it on a path that would make it stronger and more lasting than ever before. And Zeus would never, ever forgive him for it.

Poseidon shook his head. "I may be slower than you are, but I've known you a very long time. You set this up. You were supposed to offer him godhood flat out, not this one-wish nonsense. You manipulated him into giving the answer you wanted."

"I allowed him to choose his own fate," Zeus countered. "That's what these modern humans of ours want, isn't it? It seems an eternity with his father wasn't worth as much to him as a few paltry years with a scrawny blonde."

Poseidon had gone perfectly still. The air around him seemed to tighten as he stared Zeus down.

"You knew what this was to me," he said.

"Stop it, Poseidon. If you wanted this so badly, you could have ordered it."

"I can't order my son to—"

"Yes you can," Zeus said, fixing him with suddenly storm-black eyes. "You tell him, 'I am your father and you will do as I say. Now step into the coals and try not to whimper as Hestia burns off your mortality.' For all his impudence, he does as he's told when you spell it out for him. But then of course you'd have to deal with him long-term. They're easier to love when they're only aboveground for sixty years. Trust me."

Poseidon's eyes flashed hurricane-green, and there was a heavy, rock-based rumbling, darker and deeper than thunder. The mountain shook, and a chunk of cornicing fell off the door and shattered on the marble flagstones.

"It's all right. I'll have the girl fix that." Zeus answered, still readjusting his armrest. "Probably install an ice machine in the antechamber while she's at it," he muttered. "We could use one of those."

Jason woke up staring at the planks of the low ceiling above his bunk. He swung his feet to the floor without lingering.

"I think I like you more as Jupiter, Dad," said Jason as he raked his fingers through his hair. The dream had felt real, and it didn't contradict what Annabeth and Chiron had told him about the Battle of Manhattan, but you couldn't take anything for granted in the ancient lands.

Piper was already on deck when Jason got there. The early morning sunlight glittered across Katoptris, showing Rayna still awake at midnight, sharpening her bronze knife the way she always did when she was thinking.

"The closer we get to Greece, the clearer the images are," Piper said softly. "Or maybe it's that we have the Parthenos on board. Sometimes I can almost hear what people are saying. But I can't find them."

Jason squeezed her arm gently. "We'll find a way," he said. The attack on the doors had to be coordinated so that the two armies couldn't help each other. And so Percy and Annabeth would have friends waiting when they escaped from Tartarus.

There was a rustle of paper in the headwinds. Behind them, Nico was rolling out the map that he'd found in Annabeth's cabin. Officially, Nico didn't have a spot on the informal work schedule, but there was an unspoken consensus that he'd contribute as much as he could as soon as he could.

"The temple to Hades and Persephone was in Epirus," he said, voice still hollow. "That's in Albania now. Well, parts of it are."

"Can you find it?" asked Jason.

Nico looked up at him. His eyes were dead, but he had the same way about him as always, sizing things up as if Jason were some exotic plant, and Nico was guessing how much time was left until he could be harvested. Nico looked back at his map and, almost sadly, nodded. "Yes."

Lupa's training had come in handy since Nico had shown up at Camp Jupiter, ambassadors' credentials in hand. Jason always got the feeling that Nico knew something he didn't, something that he wouldn't _want_ to know. It wasn't that Nico was powerful, exactly. Jason had looked on Hera's real form and lived through it. He'd figured out that probably meant he was closer to what the gods were than most half-humans, but he always got the feeling that Nico would know what to _do_ with that kind of power, that he would channel it straight to an edge if he had it himself.

And Jason got another feeling that Nico _not_ having that kind of power was a _very_ good thing.

Piper looked back to Katoptris. Rayna had disappeared, and Jason could only see reflected clouds.

"Do you ever get angry?" Piper asked. "At your father."

"No," Jason answered immediately. "Sometimes I feel... Not angry, no."

Piper got quiet, and Jason tried not to show how uncomfortable he felt. "Maybe the kids like Leo and Thalia have something to be angry about," he admitted, "but my father gave me to Juno and Lupa." And from what Thalia had told him about their mother, getting brought up by wolves was dodging a bullet. "Jupiter sent me somewhere that was... well it wasn't _safe_ but it was good. Rome raised me."

"But he didn't do it himself."

"No, I guess he didn't," Jason said carefully. He knew this was a sore spot for Piper, and he didn't want to make it sound like he thought she was upset over nothing. "Maybe it's that I always had the legion."

Katoptris cleared, showing a tree with a shining fleece in its branches. Clarisse and Nyssa stood over kids in orange shirts as they built earthworks. Jason exhaled slowly. Those defenses wouldn't last long against troops who were used to Roman engineering.

Jason closed his eyes. People kept saying that Percy always put his friends ahead of his mission, but that hadn't seemed true. He'd let Annabeth follow the Mark of Athena alone. He'd let Frank and Hazel take on Alcyoneus without him. But could he have done this? Could he stay away when his home was threatened, trust Clarisse and the others to get the job done without him?

Jason knew the danger. In New Rome and Old, it was dangerous to stay away too long, to let someone else control the narrative. Julius Caesar and Marc Antony had both spent years in the east, lost their Roman reputations and been destroyed.

He looked over at Piper. People blamed Cleopatra for corrupting Antony, but he'd been the instrument of her downfall as much as she'd been his. Her death had been the end of the Greek age, and Olympus had moved from Alexandria to Rome.

_First the mission_. _Then I stop my friends from killing each other._

Jason told the others about his dream later that morning. He tried not to editorialize too much, but the vision had been ...unsettling. Thing was, he couldn't really point to anything that Zeus had done _wrong_. Zeus _had_ given Percy the chance to choose his own fate. He _would_ have kept his word. Zeus was crafty and sneaky and not too good to pull a fast one to get what he wanted; everyone knew that, but he was also Jupiter, so he was just.

Zues and Poseidon had sniped at each other like teenagers. Jason had been raised Roman, and seeing grown men—gods, whatever—getting emotional made him uncomfortable. Then there was the rest of Poseidon's reaction.

"Why would you see this now?" asked Piper. "Annabeth said that she finished that Ares statue months ago, before we even came to camp."

"Yeah, it's hard to figure out what we're supposed to get from this," said Leo. "That Zeus likes outsmarting other gods? We already knew that."

Jason nodded in agreement. "The only mystery is Poseidon."

"What do you mean?" asked Leo.

"'You knew what this was to me,'" Jason repeated. "What's that supposed to be about?"

Nico, who'd been staring into space where he sat leaning against the mast, slowly sat forward.

"Well... he wanted his kid to be a god," said Frank.

"Yeah, maybe," Jason conceded, "but the point of having a mortal agent is to do things that the gods are not permitted to do themselves. Poseidon doesn't have any other champions. If Percy stops being mortal, then he couldn't..." Jason suddenly faced five sets of empty stares. "What?" he asked.

"Your memory acting up again, Jason?" Leo asked carefully. "There was this whole part with the jumping waves and pretty much the whole Mediterranean freaking out."

"Yes, Neptune was angry that Percy was pulled into Tartarus."

Hazel looked straight at Jason and slowly shook her head.

"All right," said Jason, folding his arms. "Are any of you going to tell me what I'm missing?" he asked. "Look, I'm not saying that Poseidon couldn't _also_ be upset for personal reasons," Jason said. "I'm saying it didn't _feel_ like this was a normal father-and-son thing."

"In this family? Fat chance of that," Leo said through a chuckle.

"You guys didn't hear him," protested Jason. "Zeus tricking Percy out of godhood wasn't just about Percy. Something else is going on."

"Hey, uh, how many god-level sons does Zeus have?" asked Leo. "Big gods. There's my dad, Hermes, Dionysus... Eight?"

"How do you figure that?" asked Hazel.

"I'm counting Artemis as one and Athena's probably good for two," Leo finished, breaking the tension perfectly. Even Piper laughed. "Poseidon's got Triton, and I guess he's at least as big a deal as Hercules, but except for Demeter and Hades everyone else on the council is either Zeus's wife or kid. Maybe he thought Percy'd make the grade one day. Maybe he thought it would nudge the scales."

Jason wasn't sure about that. It was hard to see a guy with bed hair and cream cheese on his shirt and then think of him becoming a major deity. But then, Bacchus had done it.

"Annabeth said that Percy and his father were close. All that stuff with the waves felt personal," said Hazel. "Frank's right. Poseidon probably just didn't want Percy to end up in the Underworld."

"But Jason's right too," added Frank. "It doesn't meant that Zeus wasn't also trying to pull a fast one."

"There's more to this," said Jason. "I'm sure this is important."

They broke up, Leo taking the wheel. Jason felt hopeful now. Maybe that was why Jupiter had sent him that dream. It had given them a mystery, something to think about that wasn't impossible. And it had shown Jason something important: They were looking to him now. He'd moved the conversation one way, and they'd followed, like wolves in a pack. Leo had been the perfect omega wolf, instigating play, stopping a fight before it became a fight. Losing Percy and Annabeth had made this a different team, but it was one that Jason could lead if he stepped up.

It had shown him something else as well. Nico, the only person present who'd ever spoken to Poseidon directly, who'd seen him and Percy together, hadn't said a word.

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Once the sounds of Arachne dying had faded away, there hadn't been any way to tell where they were going. The ground had sucked at their feet like sand. Worse was the way this place seemed to pull at his head. Thinking was like swimming through tar. The touch of the air felt like a million tiny leeches swimming over him, looking for just the right place to each suck out a piece of his life.

Every now and then, Annabeth would run a hand over her hair, her clothes, his arms, and pull off another chunk of Arachne's silk, throwing it away with a shudder. It was the thick, cable-like stuff she'd used to tie down the Athena Parthenos and drag the two of them after her. Annabeth threw them outside the circle of light with a shudder. Percy raked the fingers of his free hand through his hair and came away with a handful of slightly sticky white thread. He dropped it in the sand and watched the grains move away from it like they were magnetized. Weird. This wasn't even the grossest part of Arachne, and monsters had gone for the rest of her fast enough.

They'd learned not to talk to each other. Every word felt like a piece of himself flaking off into the rift. They were quiet but they weren't lonely. They'd stopped going unnoticed.

The first one was about the size of a Labrador. It leaped in and then out of the dim light cast by Riptide in two perfect arcs, like the ten million camel crickets that had infested the Montauk rental house when he was eight. Percy could hear it chittering in the dark, see the barest hint of a gleam off what turned out to be a set of stepped mandibles, as if it couldn't decide if it were a giant ant, a giant centipede or a giant grasshopper and had gone for all three. Percy could hear clawed feet shifting in the dust, and then it launched itself toward him with no warning.

He sidestepped and slashed, costing it a side leg, but Riptide was no better than any other chunk of metal. The monster didn't even seem to notice, extending three and a half tattered wings too small for its body, whirling back to take a bite out of his free arm. It burned like battery acid, but it only made the thing easier to hit. With the first strike, it let go of Percy's arm. With the second, it lost half a mandible.

But it still wouldn't _die_. An animal would have been paralyzed. A monster would have dissolved. Maybe an insect brain couldn't get rattled. Maybe it couldn't get scared or feel doubt pressing down on it like a million pages of expulsion letters and abandoned friends. Maybe that was why it could exist here. Eventually, they broke enough of its legs so it couldn't move faster than they did. Annabeth picked up one cut limb, swinging it like a golf club from one hand like an empousa gone mad until she dropped the gross thing and touched his arm. Then he realized she'd hoped to use it as a weapon, but it was ...too heavy? Too light? Too evil?

He felt spent. He felt like the act of wondering how this monster worked and thought had burned up a layer of skin outside his brain.

The second sound was a hungry, snuffling growl, as if someone with the underworld's worst cold were giggling at a car wreck. A thicket-furred beast with five legs like stilts and a lower jaw too big for its head crouched like an eager cat and then sprang forward. But its feet were angled funny, and it had a thick, vulnerable neck. Percy passed Riptide to Annabeth and held on like it was Nereus, pressing its throat into his elbow joint, hoping it _had_ a throat, as she struck at its feet and sides.

He'd figured out that it wouldn't be able to reach him with its feet if he stayed on his back, and part of him had to flicker out and die to do it. Percy had enough energy left to wonder what in Tartarus these monsters _were_. Then Tartarus obliged him.

The third one almost took Percy's head off. Annabeth ducked, pulling him down with her into the ankle-deep dust that rose in drifts around them. He heard the rush of stale air as he uncapped Riptide and saw the creature bank awkwardly. It had one batlike wing the size of an infantry shield and two on its other side no bigger than an Alaskan raven's. It turned as Percy rolled to his feet, letting go of Annabeth as he did.

The creature came at him, springing open a giant mouth like an umbrella full of mismatched teeth, all canines and molars and fangs. Percy thrust with Riptide, feeling what he hoped was its shoulder bone crunch as he followed through. He looked up in time to see Annabeth whirl her good leg and land a downward kick between its wings, wincing as her weight landed on her injured foot. The creature scrabbled on its belly, clawing at the sand with four clawed feet. Percy recovered and swung Riptide point-first into the back of its neck, putting all his weight behind the blow. Annabeth rushed toward him, doubling her hands on top of his on the sword hilt until they felt the flesh beneath give way.

This thing just snarled. Percy pulled the blade loose and cut what he guessed were the tendons in its wings. He pulled Annabeth by the arm and started to move away before it could follow them, when the sounds coming from its throat changed. It hadn't been scared with a sword through its spine, but now it sounded like Arachne. Annabeth gave his arm a little jerk and pointed at Riptide with her chin. Carefully, one foot at a time, Percy held up the blade so that its shed their only light on the thing that had tried to kill them.

Even though he hadn't eaten since before the nymphaeum, Percy had to fight to keep his stomach down.

It was like ants swarming over a dead dog, but worse.

It wasn't sand. They'd been slogging through monster dust. Except there was no malice, no hissing crossflow that promised resurrection and revenge. The pieces that were touching the crippled monster seemed to suck the color and mobility out of it, turning it to a mummified hulk. But even a few inches away, the dust didn't seem to know there was anything there. Instead of re-forming into a gorgon or basilisk, the grains were all shifting and cringing in a hundred directions. Back in biology class, they'd made him look at different kinds of bacteria under a microscope, and these reminded him of the ones that didn't have any little tail whips or cell-oars. They were alive, but they couldn't move on their own, just drift as the world vibrated when some big jerk shook the Petri dish. Somewhere in his guts he knew that this was what happened to beasts who surrendered to the pit or had been defeated by it. That was why the gods had imprisoned Kronos here. He'd been cut into a million pieces, separated even from himself.

That was what it felt like in his head, like his thoughts were losing their oars. Thinking was starting to feel like pushing through tar. He never thought he'd feel sorry for monsters.

Then he realized that they were both breathing them in.

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"What do you know?" Jason asked quietly.

Nico didn't look up from his maps. They'd been at sea and it had been a long day, long and eventful. For Nico, most of that had meant searching Albania for their goal.

"This could be important," Jason said, sinking down onto the deck. "My dream showed me a dispute between Zeus and Poseidon over Percy becoming a god. This is about the fight with the giants, isn't it? Something about one of the gods who's going to fight with us. It's someone who used to be human."

Piper had just finished her turn at the wheel. "Like Hercules?" she asked. From the look on her face, it was clear what she thought of _that_ idea.

"Or Psyche," said Jason. After all, it didn't have to be a _major_ god. Anyone tough enough to tap a giant on the nose with a thyrsus would do. Though if Pelorus was as tough as they said in the ancient stories, maybe it was worth putting up with Hercules's big pile of crazy.

"Could be," Nico said, though Jason could tell he didn't really believe it, "but maybe that's not the part of the dream that's important. Maybe that's not what your dream trying to warn you about."

He was talking into the floor, but he was talking. "What else could it have been?" Jason asked. So there was a dispute between Poseidon and Zeus. That was nothing new.

"Hey guys," said Leo. He crouched down without preamble. "I've been thinking. If Jason can dream what happened in Olympus last summer, do you think Annabeth or Percy might get a message out?"

Nico shook his head. "No dreams."

Jason looked over, "You can't dream in Tartarus?" he asked. He'd heard somewhere that if you couldn't dream, you'd die in a couple of days.

"You can dream in Tartarus," said Nico, "but it slips in. Pushes you in strange directions. I was able to keep from losing myself, barely."

"Okay, so they'll just—"

Nico held up both hands. Jason saw the fingers twitch. It might be a while before Nico could be trusted with a sword.

"I was a _prisoner_ when I was in the pit, a valuable prisoner," Nico said. He looked from one blank face to another. "The giants _wanted_ me to make it through the Doors in one piece. They sealed me in that jar and that kept the ...things away." Nico tucked his arms around his chest and Jason wondered if the bronze of Nico's prison had always been unwelcome. And why there was something in the underworld that Nico didn't have a word for.

"You're saying that Percy and Annabeth won't be able to stop," Jason realized aloud. "They won't be able to sleep."

"They'll have to fight until they escape or die," Nico said. He twisted and glared at Leo. " You can live for a couple of days without water and couple more without sleep. _That_ is why I keep saying 'hurry up.'"

"Percy could find water," Leo supplied hopefully.

"And Annabeth will find a way," said Piper. "She always does."

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Whatever this thing was, it had long legs like stilts, and it had died standing up. Percy touched one massive leg with the point of Riptide, hearing it scrape against bare bone. The sand scavengers had hollowed out all the parts they could reach. Percy leaned his head all the way back and blinked at the body's meatier bits. In this light, he couldn't tell whether this thing had been a dragon or just a _really_ big dog.

He looked at Annabeth. _You sure about this?_ he asked with his eyes, but it didn't make any difference. Being silent didn't help.

Annabeth braced one foot between the two lower leg bones and pushed herself up. The skeleton creaked but didn't fall. She climbed higher, her fingers seeming like claws in the shadows.

"Ribs?" Percy asked carefully.

He saw her shake her head. "Skull. Sphenoid's fallen."

He couldn't have heard that right. Sfee-noid? It wasn't much harder than the climbing wall at camp, but the climbing wall was sturdy enough that two teenagers could get to the top without almost knocking it over. The hard part was that to move in tandem, they'd had to let go. Annabeth looked like a gremlin as she climbed, like a demon.

Some of the neck bones had cracked or given way, letting the head settle onto the body. They climbed in through the mouth. It should have smelled a lot worse than it did. The dryness down here must've turned it into monster jerky instead of monster worm food. Maybe air didn't work the same way down here. The point was that it smelled more than bad enough, and it was up out of the dust.

It was a tight fit. They twisted for a good three minutes before Percy realized that she wanted _him_ to lie down. He shook his head. "You first." Now that he could see her properly again, she looked so tired. She was the one with broken bones. She was the one who'd been chased through Rome's intestines by an insane spider queen.

Annabeth touched the side of his head, right at the temple. "Empathy link," she told him. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, like she had brainfreeze. It had probably hurt to get that much of an idea out.

Percy wanted to argue that Grover Underwood wasn't with their friends on the _Argo II_, but then, Grover was a lot closer than they were. A game of dream-message telephone was better than no phone at all. She was right. She was always right. He put Riptide in her hands.

He tried to move so that his head would be at least a little higher than his feet, but she wouldn't get out of the way. Eventually, she rolled her eyes and tugged on his shoulders. He lost his balance and the whole structure gave a sickening creak, but he landed with his head against one of her crossed legs. He figured out that she expected him to fall asleep with his head almost—okay with his head _actually_ in her lap. It was so discordantly normal that he gave a stunted half-snort of a laugh.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Your mom would throw me in Tartarus."

She tapped him hard on the forehead.

"Ow."

Percy made himself breathe evenly. It was hard to concentrate when her hands were making his scalp tingle, but he didn't want to tell her to stop. He tried to pretend they were back in the stables. He tried to pretend that they were around a campfire on some normal quest when their enemies only wanted to kill them.

As he slipped away, he remembered that his dreams were usually anything but restful even in the normal world. He went under ready for something crushing.

He could hear music. It pushed away the hunger in his stomach, the despair clawing at his skin. It was simply the best thing he'd ever heard, and he'd heard it before.

Olympus. There was a party going on. And over to the left of the stage...

"Dad!" Percy called out before he could stop himself.

When Annabeth had told him about her meeting with Minerva, Percy had felt as if someone had pushed little bits of ice into his guts. He'd kept his worries to himself. He hadn't wanted to make her feel worse. But Poseidon was here, and he was _fine_.

Poseidon hung back as the muses played, watching someone dance—or more accurately, watched someone do a jerky, adolescent version of what he probably _thought_ was dancing—with a mortal girl with blond hair. Percy felt his arms sink down to his sides. That was _him_. He was younger and skinnier and still wore those dorktacular middle school jeans, but it was definitely him. He and Annabeth were both a little the worse for wear, matching gray streaks on their heads, but they were happy. Percy remembered it perfectly. The danger was over. The bad guy was defeated, and no one wanted to blast them into moonbeams. They were safe.

Percy stepped back, realizing that everyone was dressed for winter and that he couldn't see any of Annabeths' new buildings. That statue of Hera that had smashed Thalia's fibulas during the battle of Manhattan was still standing.

This wasn't a message. It was a memory.

Past-Percy stepped on Annabeth's foot and Percy and Poseidon winced at the same time. Percy made a mental note to either learn to dance or never do it in public again, _ever_.

So this was a nice break from being trapped in Tartarus, but it wasn't clear how it was helpful. Beyond that, he felt a little annoyed. He liked to think that his dad didn't spend more time with him because he had super-important god stuff to do. Didn't he get enough of just watching when they weren't within speaking distance?

Poseidon regarded Percy and Annabeth for a moment. "Well she seems reasonably—"

"No," said a cold, female voice at his elbow.

"You haven't heard what I was going to say," Poseidon answered with amusement.

"_No_." Percy watched Athena fold her arms across her chest.

Poseidon turned toward her. "Is this about his GPA? You pay too much attention to those things." Percy stiffened. Had Poseidon been getting his report cards? _Shit_. Also, where was this going because it sounded weirder than usual.

Athena looked at him as if he were a fascinating new microbe that she'd never seen before. "Why do you bother thinking about his future?" she asked.

Poseidon's face suddenly got a lot harder to read. "Zeus's girl could change her mind," he said, "break her vows."

Percy updated his weirder-than-usual threshold. It was no secret that Poseidon had always known about the prophecy, but hearing him and Athena talk about it like it was a dip in the stock market was definitely not fun.

Athena smiled with more pride than pity. "I know a few things about the daughters of Zeus, Poseidon. But let's say she isn't steadfast. Then what?" She looked behind her toward the thrones, where Zeus was eying a few of the dancers too approvingly for Hera's taste. "Thalia has a score to settle. Percy could stand to learn some respect, but he doesn't hate us."

Poseidon eyed Athena cautiously. "I suppose he doesn't," he answered. "Still, a lot can happen in two years."

"Don't try to make it overlook him," Athena continued. "The boy Hades tried to hide from us in Nevada would be worse than Thalia. He..." she paused. "He has legitimate grievances."

"That may be, but he doesn't know what they are."

Percy's brain was still catching up to what Athena had said. _Had_ his dad thought about stuffing him in Ogygia or someplace until Nico turned sixteen? That was ...creepy and touching at the same time. He almost missed it when Poseidon continued with, "Besides, he's not necessarily next in line."

Athena fixed him with a stare. "You know that wouldn't be good for _us_," she insisted.

Percy suddenly realized what they were talking about. He'd spent two years thinking that he'd better not croak because the free world did not need Nico the amazing ticking timebomb boy as its lifeline, but there was someone else in the middle. It all depended on whether "eldest gods" only meant Greek.

There was no doubt in Percy's mind that Jason would have told the Titans to stick it where Hyperion didn't shine, but he'd have done it Roman. Three moldy apples and a toolshed said that wouldn't be a great deal for the sea god. /font

"So you've run your calculations and Percy is our best option?" Poseidon answered with something that might have been bitterness. He didn't like what Athena was saying, but Percy realized with a funny numb feeling that he wasn't disagreeing with her either.

"Since the council decided against eliminating all candidates, yes."

Poseidon went back to watching the two kids dance. Percy didn't remember this song. He was finding out that he didn't remember a lot about that night.

"It's not only mortals who have to make sacrifices, Poseidon," Athena insisted.

"I know," he answered, in a way that sounded like "shut up."

"Where is this coming from?" asked Athena, staring at Poseidon as if he were a trigonometry problem that wouldn't come out. "You're not usually like this about your human children."

"It's been some time since I've had one," Poseidon answered casually.

Athena wasn't buying. "You went over two hundred years without a claim when you were trying to smooth things over with Amphitrite."

"Was it that long? Fortunately, I don't need a reason or your permission to take an interest in my own son."

"You might not need a reason," Athena countered, "but you always have one." She looked at him and smiled, as if she'd finally identified all his moving parts and could disassemble him at will. "Even if you don't know what it is."

Poseidon shot her a look. She'd figured him out, and he didn't like it. "Don't make me your next puzzle, Athena."

"Fine. Keep your sentiments private. Just tell him to stay away from my daughter."

Poseidon seemed to laugh, but it didn't make it all the way out. "How much mischief could they get up to before the clock runs out?"

"He has a hero's doom, Poseidon. I don't want her struck down because she happens to be standing nearby."

Well that was pretty darn ironic. Not that it was Annabeth's fault, but Percy was pretty sure that Arachne hadn't been aiming at him.

The music kept playing, and Percy tried to make sense of what he'd heard. _Sacrifices_. It sounded like Gaea again. _Sacrifices to wake the goddess_. Hearing it discussed as if it were something normal was hard for him to handle. "_Hello Poseidon; nice day, isn't it? That Percy kid's totally going to bite it in two years." "Sure is. Lunch?" "Starved."_

He realized that the dream wasn't over. Poseidon was walking toward the edge of the room. Apparently, he'd had enough of gorgeous, soul-soothing music for one night. Percy tried not to cringe as the Tartarus-cancelling headsounds got softer.

The ophiotaurus was still swimming happily in its bubble, making shadows on the floor underneath, poking its muzzle out at the dancing people, the muses playing their songs. At least someone was still having a good time. Poseidon stared at the creature for a long minute. Was he thinking about what Athena had said about sacrifices?

Eventually, he raised his hand and the bubble started to move away from the crowd. Because of some trick of the dream or because he'd gotten more in touch with his inner sea-cow in the past three years, Percy could understand the ophiotaurus when it spoke.

_Hail, lord_. Bessie seemed to have a child's voice, like that one kid from first grade who'd had weirdly perfect manners and never complained about having to wait in line. _Am I going back to the ocean?_

"You must be confined, creature. It is for your own safety."

A hippocampus would have been upset, but Bessie asked, _No more bad people?_

"You'll be safe from the bad people."

The ophiotaurus ducked its head, the same head that had rubbed against Percy's hands after he'd untangled those fishing nets. He was so trusting. Poseidon said that everything was going to be okay, and it believed him. The idea of anyone even thinking of hurting Bessie seemed impossible. No one could be that big of a jerk

_Will my protector stay too?_

Poseidon gave a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Your protector is not with us now, creature. He died long ago."

Bessie's whole body shook as if someone had said the word "entrails." It twisted until its head pointed back toward the dance floor. _No! No! There!_

Poseidon followed the ophiotaurus' line of sight straight to where Percy and Annabeth were splitting a bowl of chips.

"Do you mean the boy?" Poseidon said sharply.

The ophiotaurus dropped its upper body and made a high-pitched noise. _Sorry! Sorry!_

Percy got caught up as Poseidon tried to convince Bessie that no one was mad at him. Grover had said that the ophiotaurus had called him its protector. And ...that was bad? It made sense that Bessie would have had guards the last time that he was alive too, and maybe he had gotten Past-Percy confused with this other guy from way back. If Bessie was like most sea creatures, then he probably couldn't see human faces too well, and the interface between water and air meant that it couldn't use scent like Blackjack did, so... How _did_ it tell people apart?

"How do you know that Percy is your protector?" asked Poseidon.

_Saved me from the bad weeds. Saved me from the bad people. But they came back_. The beast made a frightened sound.

"Bad weeds" was probably ophio-speak for that stupid trawler net. Percy wasn't sure he deserved credit for saving Bessie from Luke and company, but it wasn't too out there that the ophiotaurus would think he did.

"Well that might be..." Poseidon didn't seem satisfied. "What do you see when you look at him?"

The ophiotaurus squirmed in its bubble like a kid who gets called on in class and has no idea what the question means. Then it looked straight at Poseidon with eyes as wide as the world.

_Do you mean the curse?_ it said.

Poseidon covered his mouth with one hand, as if he'd just been told about a terminal disease. Across the wide space, Past-Percy was laughing with Annabeth as if nothing was wrong.

_Great_, thought Percy. Here he was, finding out that one of his best memories actually pretty darn depressing, and his body was still doing time in Tartarus. Maybe if he concentrated, he could get somewhere more useful, contact Jason or Grover or...

Percy looked up and realized that Bessie was staring right at him. Carefully, Percy looked behind him. Nothing interesting there. Then he slowly leaned left, then right. Bessie tracked him each time.

_Hello_, it said.

"Uh, hi," Percy answered. "You can see me?"

_Yes_.

"But I'm kind of... not here. Or now."

_Easier_.

Okay, he must have lapsed into a real dream. Or maybe this whole thing had been a real dream. No way could Bessie really tell he was here. He was only imagining that he had a body, so there was nothing to see. Kronos and that nutjob empousa Kelli had been able to sense his presence, but that had been happening at the same time.  
Whatever. Annabeth was standing over his sleeping body with a sword, possibly fighting off monsters solo so that he could get a message out. It wasn't as if he could afford to be picky about who got it.

Percy pointed to Poseidon. "Can you tell him something for me?" he asked. Bessie turned his head to the side and Percy realized that its ability to do that was probably pretty limited. If it was like horses or hippocampi, then it didn't have such a great concept of time passing. It's-three-years-in-the-future-and-Annabeth-and-I- got-sucked-into-Tartarus-and-need-to-coordinate-a- perfectly-timed-attack-with-friends-on-the-outside -who-don't-even-know-where-to-find-us-and-even-tho ugh-you're-not-allowed-to-help-and-probably-brain- whammied-by-a-new-demigod-civil-war-we-could-reall y-use-a-way-of-killing-Gaea's-minions-got-any-idea s? was probably beyond Bessie's vocabulary. Still, he might as well try.

Before he could speak, Bessie flipped inside his bubble. _I already told him_, he said_. You are not dead_.

"Okay," said Percy. "That's good, I guess. I'm not dead." He looked over at Poseidon. He was still staring at Past-Percy and seemed to be thinking hard about something. He either thought that Bessie was talking to himself or just wasn't listening. "Could you tell him that the prophecy won't kill me?" Percy asked.

_Prophecy?_

"Curse. You called it a curse. Tell him that the curse won't kill me."

Bessie looked serious. _Curse_, it said.

"Yeah, I know," said Percy. "Tell him I'm going to live through it. I kept my promise. I won't let him down."

_Curse_, Bessie repeated, looking more agitated.

"I heard you," Percy, said reassuringly. "But can you tell him—"

_Curse!_ Bessie reared back like a deer in the headlights, and Percy realized that it was pointing to something behind him. He turned—

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Percy threw both arms up in front of his face, which was stupid since he was only imagining that he had arms and a face. The light was blinding, so it blinded him. It was like being swept up in a current that he couldn't control, buffeting him against time and the insides of his skull all at once. Percy emerged blinking in the bright light. He looked left and right, steeling himself against the chill of Tartarus without the Muses.

He was still on Olympus, but the throne room this time. The light was strange, clearly sunlight but more daring and wild. All twelve thrones were occupied and a chair had been set for Hades, he realized as he shielded his eyes, but this wasn't the summer or winter solstice. An emergency meeting.

"The beast has been found," said Poseidon.

"Then it should be killed," said Athena.

"It is an innocent creature, Athena," came a soft voice from a simple carved-rock throne. Hestia, twenty feet tall and in the form of a grown woman, spoke from underneath a brown, hooded cloak. The Olympians quieted to make out her words. "The sacrifice might merely perfect the curse. Its death could be where true power lies. We should not kill it."

Percy gave the room a double-take while the Olympians considered this. None of Annabeth's new buildings were in sight, and there was no Mr. D. Whatever was happening, it had gone down a _long_ time ago, maybe before the end of the Titan War.

They all looked a little different. Maybe it was because there was nothing of Rome or Byzantium or America in them yet. Artemis looked as tough as ever, but she seemed less regal. It took a minute for Percy to realize that her silvery glow was gone. She and Apollo hadn't become the sun and the moon yet. Maybe it was just that he knew his face the best, but Poseidon seemed the most different. There was something missing from his expression, a heaviness that Percy hadn't noticed until it wasn't there.

"We can allow the ophiotaurus to live, under guard," Poseidon was saying. "My own son has that duty."

Ares grunted. "Triton's tough. Good warrior."

"And a child of an elder god," added Hades. "Can we be sure that he will not give in to temptation?"

"Triton could have become very powerful if he'd sided with Oceanus," Hestia pointed out in her soft voice. "If he wanted to betray us, couldn't he have done it already?"

Hera sniffed. "Deformed creature. Honestly, Poseidon, I don't know why you don't follow the human practice and leave them on a hillside when they're born like that. Amphitrite is bound to have a good one sooner or later." She sat forward. "Maybe one with feet."

Hephaestus flicked his eyes toward his mother, beard sparking, but he said nothing.

"I cannot believe you were prevailed upon to marry her."

"Hera," Poseidon began, "you know perfectly well that when I married Amphitrite—"

"—the union won us Nereus's surrender and Oceanus's neutrality," interrupted Zeus. "Amphitrite is a beautiful woman, and from what I hear, _she_ knows how to mind her tongue. If that doesn't bring marital happiness, then I don't know what does."

Hera huffed.

"As fascinating as the two of you seem to find my home life," countered Poseidon, "perhaps the creature whom our enemies could use to destroy us all merits our attention as well."

"Yes, I dislike having such a bargaining chip in your possession, Brother," Zeus said coldly.

"Would you have made the beast common property if my niece had been the first to find it?" Poseidon gestured toward Artemis. "Or one of your followers, Hades? If the ophiotaurus remains in my domain, my forces can protect it. We can keep it moving from hiding place to hiding place. It would be much harder to find than on land or in some lake."

"I don't know," said Hermes, tapping one winged sandal. "I'm pretty sure I could manage something. There are places in this world that even Titans can't find."

"And most of them are underwater."

Zeus nodded. "All in favor of allowing Poseidon to take _full_ responsibility for the bane of Olympus?"

Hands went up. Percy counted the twins, Hestia, Ares, Hephaestus, Demeter, Hera. Guess she didn't mind a "deformed creature" saving her butt.

Zeus fixed his brother with a gaze that crackled like ozone. "You had best be able to back up your claims, Brother."

Poseidon gave a tight smile, as if he knew something that Zeus didn't. "I have complete confidence in my son's skill," he said, "and in his loyalty."

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The instant he woke, he could feel Tartarus pressing down on him like a hundred lead weights. Annabeth's face was over his, hollow-eyed and streaked with dust.

"Did it work?"

Percy shook his head, hearing the desiccated ligaments of the dead monster creak. Annabeth closed her eyes. Percy put his hand over hers. "Your turn," he said, starting to twist so that she could lie down. Or something.

She shook her head, and even that was enough to make the skull shake. "We need to move." She passed something the size of a lead pipe between her hands, and Percy realized it was a tooth from the monster's jaws. Had she sharpened its edges while he slept? He couldn't even care about dulling his sword's edge. Not now.

"It helps," he said. He was still hungry and he could feel dehydration crawling up his limbs like a kid up a dry waterslide, but the sleep had done some good. "You need to rest," he said. It must have been true because she didn't even argue, just handed him Riptide. The monster bones creaked as the weight inside the skull shifted. With a lot of twisting and painful contortions, they managed to switch positions. Annabeth managed squeezed into a fetal position on her side, and Percy could almost sit up straight.

It was so hard, _so hard_, to be quiet while Tartarus clawed away at his will. The dream had renewed him—sort of—but that wouldn't last forever. His skin crawled. His joints itched. He wanted to stretch his legs, swing his arms. Percy kept his hand on Riptide and his ears open, but even that felt like he was giving this place a way into his soul. It wanted in. Tartarus wanted to find the fissures in his being and pry open a way inside, like water seeping into cracks in the road so that it could make potholes when it turned to ice.

He tried to focus on Annabeth's breathing, on the distant sounds of monsters searching the sands for food, but he couldn't help going back to his dream. Poseidon had been upset about the prophecy, but not in any of the right places. But his dad hadn't known him that well back then. But he didn't know him that much better now. And what did Bessie have to do with _any_ of it?

He knew that some of this was Tartarus pushing his mind around like a stale burger bun on an air hockey table. Percy tried to shake it off. His dad cared about him. He went over the times they'd talked in his head. His dad cared about him. His dad had claimed him even though he'd known it would get him in trouble. His dad had trusted him to look out for Tyson. His dad had wanted him to be a god.

Annabeth's fingers loosened, and Percy finally noticed what she had in her hands. Some of this monster's teeth were almost the same shape as a good knife. He turned it over in his hands, nearly slicing open a thumb. She'd been sharpening it, but only the lower edge. He hadn't been asleep long, then. Percy counted to a hundred breaths and then a hundred more and he'd lost count of how many times he'd done it. Eventually, Annabeth stirred, one hand going to her face.

"Message?" he asked. Words had gotten hard again.

"No, but I figured something out." Annabeth licked her cracked lips and opened her hand, showing him one last scrap of Arachne's silk.

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At first, he thought it was a miracle that they made it back. Then he realized that the miracle was that none of the scavengers had tracked them. Every chunk that they'd combed out and left behind left little pits in the sand where all the grains tried to shuffle away. They cast shadows.

But there it was, shining like something pure, scarred only by a single neat cut near the edge.

Arachne didn't like to rip up her work, not even when it had gotten her dragged into Tartarus.

Annabeth knelt down, touching the spider trap gingerly. "Athena couldn't find the Parthanos because Arachne hid it," she said. "She hid us too."

When Percy had woken up after his fall, Arachne hadn't had a scrap of that stuff on her. Maybe it was true that spiders didn't get stuck in their own webs. Once she'd busted out of the spidercuffs, she'd had no shield, but Percy and Annabeth had been covered in 700-threadcount spinneret snot for the first few hours.

"We need to get to the Doors, and it would be a lot easier to sneak there than fight," said Annabeth. She waved him over and he held up Riptide for her to see by as she judged where to cut with her makeshift dagger.

This place hadn't gotten any less unnerving. If there had ever been an opening to the sky, it was closed up now. The only way Percy was sure they were in the right place was by the seven and a half exoskeletal limbs that reached up toward nothing like the twigs of a dead tree. They'd lost a day of time and strength, and they were right back where they started.

"I'll look for your knife," he said. "Your laptop." Seven words. Killer.

She shook her head. "They're gone," she said, sounding sure. "Don't go." Then he moved until he was touching her, just barely. He sat down, did what she told him, but her hands were cleverer than his. There were no needles, so they tied knots to keep the cords from unraveling. Eventually, Annabeth pulled a loose, sleeveless poncho over her head, covering up Rome as if she'd never been there. She took two of the leftover sections and tied one tight around what was left of her splint and the other around her good ankle. Percy smiled. That might keep the dust out, kind of like tucking your pants into your socks to keep out deer ticks the way no one actually ever did. Then she handed him the other one.

"It's not even my size."

"Just put it on—" she stopped short, as if pushing the words out. "Seaweed Brain."

Smiling felt weird on his face, but he did it. The cloth didn't feel right, not even through his clothes, but then nothing else did either.

"Now what?" he asked as Annabeth knotted the last threads into a coil and slung them over her shoulder.

She licked her cracked lips. "Now we find something that can still talk."

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drf24


	2. Two

Percy, Annabeth, Jason and their friends are copyright R. Riordan.

I've been working on this 'fic since July, and I am trying very, very hard to get this posted before H of H comes out on Tuesday. Thank you everyone for the faves and the kudoses and the encouraging notes. I'm expecting that this story will have four chapters. A good chunk of the second half is already written.

Because of the posting issues, I am even more glad to accept concrit than usual.

This contains spoilers for _Mark of Athena_ and books preceding. Because I have not read _House of Hades_ yet, nothing in here can be called a spoiler, but I might have guessed correctly in a few places. One plot element is based the cover art. You do not need to read "Next of Kin" to understand this story.

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"Maybe he had actually been an eidelon all his life, because this kid he'd just seen should have been the _real_ Leo. He was smarter, cooler, and funnier." —_Mark of Athena_

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There were sounds of a battle, but not a human battle. He knew this noise. Titans but more than titans.

It was strange to see Zeus out of formalwear, but he was in armor, real armor that looked like it had been made for hard use and nothing else. There was a tough but forgettable sword in his hand and beads of metallic sweat on his forehead. His face was streaked with dirt. This Zeus was tired and injured. But he wasn't alone. Two other men, both older, both with his black hair, circled around their opponent.

The man was wearing an elaborate cut leather garment around his hips. This was older than Greek-style clothing, older than Minoan. There was nothing from the waist up, but he didn't seem naked. He had no imperfections or weaknesses that needed covering, not even in his imagination. Not unless the three ichor-seeping wounds in his chest counted as imperfections. One hand shook as a weapon clattered from his failing grip.

Technically, the man should have seemed human. He had a nose. He had two hands and two ears, but he was the single most alien creature he'd ever perceived. The look on his face held coldness, cruelty, and something that might have been what people used for justice before there was justice: the strength that would bring down the mighty but would not protect the weak. Even in the dream the concept of him seemed to vibrate, moving backward and forward, happening a little ahead and a little behind itself.

Even through that, there was a pronounced family resemblance.

Jason realized that this was Kronos, the actual Kronos, back when he'd still had a body of his own. "You think you've defeated me, my boys?" The titan lord's voice was like knives, even in a dream. He gave a laugh, even though he had to be in pain. "Only Fate can truly conquer time. I have my brothers. I have my mortal champions. You will not rule long."

Jason looked around. The legion had been warned that Kronos' return to power would have restored all the other titans to the strength they'd known during their rule. The nuclear blaze out on the battlefield was probably Hyperion. The guy throwing mountains must have been Atlas. And this was the Lord of Time in the last of his maddening glory, making one final lash at the gods who had defeated him.

There was something off about the three of them. Jason breathed in. Poseidon held a trident but didn't smell like the ocean. Hades didn't look like he hadn't seen the sun in years. Zeus's eyes didn't crackle like lightning. There was something like ozone about all three of them. There was something unformed. Zeus held out his hand and Kronos's weapon flew into it. The titan's gold eyes narrowed.

It would have been invisible to anyone who hadn't spent years learning to fight in tandem. Zeus's shoulders straightened and then all three brothers moved, scythe, spear, trident. Kronos fell to his knees, and it was impossible to say which god had made the deadly strike. He gave something like a laugh. Then he spoke, saying three things at once.

"Hades, my firstborn—"

"Poseidon my son—"

"Zeus—"

Kronos seemed to be looking at all three men at once, to speak to all three men at once, but the words were slippery, falling away as soon as Jason heard them. Only his promise to Zeus seemed to hold steady, clear against the other two like lightning against a dark sky.

"Zeus, you have brought me low, as I did my father, but as sure as I am master of time, you will know the same defeat. A son of your line will surpass you." All three sentences ended. Jason had picked up a —_none_ for Hades and a —_curse_ for Poseidon, but the words rang funny in his head and he couldn't hold them down. "Unless you deliberately decide to sire only inferior offspring," Kronos added. "You could always try to get heroes on human dams." He laughed as if this were a joke. Jason raised an eyebrow. Kronos really didn't know his children well.

Zeus hefted the scythe. "Enough," he said.

It was a grisly business. Kronos didn't fall to dust on his own like a monster. Every piece had to be cut by hand.

The words weren't made out of vibrations in the air any more. Kronos no longer had a throat or a mouth. There was nothing but intent, but it was clear and sharp.

_I will return, my dear sons_.

Zeus leaned on the tall scythe. It was one of the most powerful weapons ever made. It had first defeated and humiliated Ouranos, and now it had done the same for Kronos. It was clear in Zeus's eyes—he was deciding not to keep it. Whatever else could be said about Zeus, half the gods on the council were his kids, plus Hercules and a whole bunch of minor gods and goddesses. He hadn't eaten any of them. Maybe he had broken Kronos's curse and maybe he hadn't, but he had not let it put him in fear. He hadn't let it turn him into his father.

Zeus looked out at the horizon. "There is more to do, my brothers. The other titans will fight us, perhaps for centuries. We will need more allies. The sky, the sea, and what lies beneath the earth must all be subdued."

"Three tasks," said Hades.

"Three kingdoms," finished Poseidon.

"We'll draw lots," Zeus said. "Where the earth meets the upper air we'll hold in common."

Poseidon looked at Hades and they both nodded.

If any of them were shaken by their father's last words, it did not show.

Jason woke up in time to take the night shift. The sun was going down over Italy. With any luck, they'd sight Epirus by morning. Pompeii had been more eventful than they'd hoped, but it had been productive.

"I had another dream," he said without preamble. Frank, Piper and Coach Hedge turned around. "I saw Kronos tell my father he was cursed."

"That's common knowledge," said Coach. "Zeus has always kept an eye open for a son who might overthrow him." He snorted. "Between you, me, and the shiptree—"

"Mast," said Leo without taking his hands off the wheel.

"—that's the only reason he didn't get together with Thetis. She was a real looker too. Oracle said she'd have a son who'd be better than his father, so Zeus ordered her to marry Peleus." Coach nodded. "Fine enough for a human, I guess, and their son Achilles sure knew how to bust heads."

"Could be why Athena's his favorite kid," said Leo. "It only covers dudes. She can get as awesome as she wants and he still won't have to worry that she's Kronos's revenge."

Nico stood up, and Jason realized that he hadn't seen him leaning against the mast. "Kronos is the god of time and of events passing. I guess 'curse' is the closest that English can come to what he does." He shrugged to the side. "My dad got one too but I don't know what it is. He does _not_ like to talk about his father."

"You think it's the same as Zeus'?" asked Leo.

Nico shook his head. "If it were, Persephone would have a whole palace full of daughters. I think it's..." Nico stopped talking. "It could be anything. Could be why he drew the underworld when his two younger brothers got the good stuff." There was a touch of bitterness there, as if Nico thought his father had deserved better.

Frank thought for a moment. "It might be why they kicked him out. Kronos must have been scared when his kids teamed up against him. If Hades was an outcast, then they couldn't do anything like that again."

"If that's the curse, then it broke last year when Father faced Kronos in New York," said Nico. He shook his head. "So I don't think it is."

"So Kronos probably put one on all three of them," said Jason. "Maybe on the sisters too." Hera had her endless frustrations with a husband whom she hadn't wanted to marry in the first place. Demeter lost her daughter. Hestia lost her throne. Could be. "But if Zeus got being surpassed by one of his sons and Hades got ...something, then what did Poseidon get?"

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.

Annabeth was kicking herself for not thinking of it sooner. After all, it had nearly gotten the whole camp leveled. If Luke could get his hands on something powerful enough to kill Thalia's barrier, why not them? They were close to the source. At least they didn't have to trap an elder python.

Percy recognized the sound of her wings. At first he wasn't sure which one she was, but Annabeth wasn't sure why it mattered. Then the angry muttering made it clear why she'd gone off on her own. Percy extinguished Riptide, and they worked by touch, hoping she wouldn't hear them or leave before the trap was set. Then Percy stepped off on his own. Annabeth hated when he did that. Tartarus made him look like a cross between a goblin and all the boys who'd called her names in middle school. When he was in position, he called out, "Which aisle is housewares again?"

Annabeth called back, tightening the last knot. "It was aisle two, I'm sure of it!"

"Customers?" a female voice said curiously.

Annabeth took a breath, listening hard as she flapped toward Percy. He'd done this before, he'd said. She'd nearly killed him a dozen times, but he'd killed her a dozen and one. But he'd had the Mark of Achilles then. Her thoughts went gray. The Mark of Achilles was the only reason—

"Customers!" she said happily. "Welcome to Bargain Mart. New branch! Aisle one, housewares. Aisle two, eternal damnation! Aisle three—"

Annabeth's timing was perfect, one yank and the silk cords collapsed. Percy drew Riptide. After days in the dark, it was more than bright enough.

Stheno was flat on her back on the sand, her clawed feet beating at nothing with her wings pinned under her round body. "Noooooo..." she wailed. "You're not bargain hunters! Who are you?"

"I remember her being tougher," croaked Percy, standing close so that they were touching again. Maybe dying took the fight out of a girl. Or a gorgon.

Annabeth had never realized how easy it was to weave a trap. The more Stheno struggled, the tighter the cords held her down.

"Bargain Mart offers you a better deal! Nylon rope for $32.99!" Stheno started to squeal as the monster particles started to realize they had a live one. Relatively speaking. "Let me up, curse you!"

Annabeth sank down, forcing her voice to drop like Arachne's. She held her fang-knife to Stheno's eye. "The Doors of Death, monster," she snarled, trying to sound as fierce as if she'd haunted the pit for centuries. "Tell us where they are. How they're guarded."

"Never!" cried Stheno. Behind her, Percy kept his head up, watching, but no one else seemed to be coming. "I'll never tell you about Enceladus's advance guard!"

Enceladus. Jason, Piper and Leo had fought him when they'd rescued Piper's dad. He'd been made to kill Athena.

"You'll never get past him, not now that Polybotes has returned to us!" Annabeth felt a shudder go through Percy's body. He hadn't told her the whole story of his quest with Frank and Hazel, not the uncensored version, but she'd figured out that Polybotes had cut him a lot worse than he'd let on. Stheno was still talking. "Soon the twins will re-form as well. The minute you cross the River Acheron, you will be dragged to the ancient stones and sacrificed with an Exacto-Plus Carvomatic, only $24.99!"

"We already know about Enceladus's army of hellhounds!" Annabeth sneered.

"Hellhounds? Ha! Hush puppies, $8.49 a dozen. We have northern cyclopes under Ma Gasket, camped at the west bend."

_Di immortales_, was this monster going to fall for every cheap trick in Interrogation 101? It was about time they had some luck. Prompt after prompt, she got Stheno to tell her everything.

It made her feel as though layers of her mind were peeling away like dead, burned skin.

Little chunks of sand were poking at Stheno's sides in the spaces where the spider silk didn't touch. They were running out of time.

"Right or left?" Percy asked. Annabeth kicked the gorgon in the side.

Percy quickly cut Stheno's upper arm then put the point of Riptide back at her throat in case she tried to thrash. Annabeth didn't know if Riptide would work any better against gorgons than it did against scavengers, but if he turned her to dust now, they'd have to find the other one. She slipped to the side and collected the blood in a hollowed-out monster bone, plugging it with a cork she'd whittled using her bit of fang. They couldn't get both sides. There was only one container.

"Nice doing business with you," said Percy.

Stheno started to laugh as little rivers of sand began to stream across her chest, turning her withered flesh even grayer. "Oh... Oh you little pawns," she said. "You'd have done better to take from my other side. Then you could have died pure." She chuckled as the snakes on her head began to shrivel and her eyes began to glaze. "No healing... Not from what's ahead for you..."

Annabeth stepped back, checking the seal for leaks before looping some cords around the narrow part of the bone and tying it to one of the belt loops of her jeans. _This end up_, she reminded herself. The edges of the cork glistened with moisture that made her throat burn, despite the evil sheen. One lick and it would—what had Phineas said?—_degrade her essence_, keeping even a monster from re-forming for a long time.

Later, they would stop, hiding behind some boulders as the sounds of the River Acheron grew ahead of them, and carefully paint the edges of Riptide and Annabeth's knife with poison. It was a good plan, but Annabeth couldn't help but think they were going to need more, something better than a celestial blade and a broken tooth dipped in gorgon's blood. They'd have half an army to defeat. Where was a godly tack nuke when you needed one?

They walked until Annabeth staggered on her weak leg. She could still feel the nectar burning away inside her, but it didn't feel focused on her ankle any more. Instead, it had gummed up, heavy inside her chest. This should have worried her but didn't. It felt like the healing power had gone to most important parts of her, the way a starving person's body sacrificed muscle and saved fat. Check that, she was worried, but not about herself. Percy hadn't taken any nectar the day they'd been pulled in. He did not look good.

They found a stalagmite, old and jagged, as if something the size of Typhon had bitten off its top half. On their third try, they managed to climb to a flat space partway up. She managed to twist so that her head was resting almost comfortably against Percy's leg and still be positioned so she'd wake up if anything attacked them. Then she closed her eyes and focused has hard as she could on Piper, Jason and Chiron as she slipped away. _Athena... Mother, help me come up with a plan._

It was only the same dream. Minerva disowning her, raving at her to kill anything that had ever been Roman, from the Pantheon to the boy who had the legion's mark on his skin. Octavian burning the camp so that Athena was lost forever. Her mother calling her a traitor and worse for lying here with Percy's hand on her shoulder. Worse, in the dream, she believed that Minerva was _right_.

_Be no more daughter of mine, Annabeth Chase_... and there was power in the words. She could feel her teeth elongate into needles as her body darkened and stretched, growing extra eyes and legs under the force of her mother's unjust sentence. _You will never weave enough to cover your failure, never create enough beauty to forget your shame._

She didn't know how long she was out, but she pushed herself up and took Riptide from Percy. She'd take the nightmares. Now that she was awake again, she could feel Tartarus scrabbling at her will like a hundred tiny spiders, ready to replace her blood with venom.

"I know what you're doing," she whispered into the void, "and it won't work."

The air around them rumbled slightly, as if something very big were laughing.

Percy moved fitfully in his sleep. Annabeth felt her fingers grow cold on Riptide's hilt and hoped he would have better luck contacting camp or the _Argo II_ than she had. If they reached the Doors of Death too early, then the best they could hope for would be to escape Tartarus. It all would have been for nothing.

The sleep did help. Her mind was clearer, at least for a little while. Last time, she'd figured out that they needed Arachne's silk. This time... This time it occurred to her to wonder why Gaea had stopped asking them to come and be her sacrifices.

She had a feeling that they were already here.

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.

.

Piper hadn't said much. Hazel was still getting some sleep—which she deserved like a sonofagun after what Leo had had her up to on the ground all day. Frank wasn't too thrilled about it, but he hadn't complained. After all, it had been his idea. Frank wandered off to the stern, and after five yawns, Leo let Jason take the helm. Eventually, it was just the two of them in the day's last light.

"Do you really think that Poseidon was only upset because he lost an agent?" Piper asked quietly. "Like Percy was his personal assistant or something?"

Jason had to think about it. "I don't," he said, "but it's not like they're regular parents. They know they're supposed to outlive us, the way that most kids know they're supposed to outlive their grandparents. If this had been anything but Tartarus, I'd think Poseidon would be sad but he wouldn't be..." Jason raised his shoulders. "He wouldn't have been like _that_."

She stared out into the water for a long time. Jason didn't mind. Wondering what she was thinking was almost as interesting as finding out.

"I don't think Aphrodite would miss me," she said. "Not much. We're like the perfect outfits to her. Inviting or intimidating or just pretty. She wears us when she wants and then she forgets about us."

"You're special, Piper," he said.

"So's Lacey. So's Mitchell. But Mom didn't think so." She shrugged. "Half the kids in the Aphrodite cabin weren't claimed until after Percy made her promise. _Half._" Jason blinked. He hadn't known it was that many. "Even Drew. She likes to talk like she knew Silena Beauregard , but she was sleeping on the floor in the Hermes cabin until last summer. She's got charmspeak, so everyone _knew_ she was Aphrodite's, but according to the old rules, that didn't matter."

Jason was quiet. He didn't know what Piper was getting at. Well ...more like he knew a couple of things that she might be getting at and didn't know which one was right. The old rules were bad. Maybe. Jason had seen one or two of the new recruits who might have been better off staying in the mortal world, but there had been about a hundred recruits.

The truth was, Jason didn't know if Percy had been right to turn Zeus down. Percy hadn't made a _bad_ decision, but he might not have made the _best_ one. Everything sounded all right on the surface, but if he'd _been_ a god, couldn't he have done more for his vision of a stronger Olympus?

Being a god had to be better than being mortal, because the _gods_ had to be better than mortals. Otherwise, what was the point? The sacrifices, literal and otherwise, had to count.

"Neptune isn't in his right mind now," said Jason. "He's like Minerva, stuck between his selves. He didn't freak out because he loves Percy more than Aphrodite loves you. He freaked out because he couldn't help it."

Piper smiled, but he could tell he hadn't helped. Nothing made him feel as mortal as she did. If he were smarter, he'd know exactly what to say. They were silent a long time. Jason kept his mind on the air currents, watching for monsters, but he was starting to hope that their change of route must have thrown them off the scent.

Or something _wanted_ them to make it to the House of Hades.

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As days in Tartarus went, this one had been pretty good. It still wasn't Percy's favorite vacation spot. The food was non-existent and the accommodations were full of cannibalistic monster dust, but at least the tour guides were informative. Even with this place messing with sight and sound, there was something utterly _Annabeth_ about tricking a dumb monster into spilling her guts. She'd always been a genius, but now she was an evil genius. Enceladus might know better than to confide in Stheno and Euryale, but he couldn't stop the little hags from poking their snouts everywhere.

When it was his turn, he passed her Riptide. He shouldn't have been able to sleep with the cold and the jabbing thirst and crushing doom, but as soon as he closed his eyes he knew he would be out like a light.

_Nico. Jason. Hazel_, he forced himself to think, picturing their faces, their eyes, the fact that they needed to coordinate this attack. _Grover. Frank. Piper. Coach_.

But as his mind slipped away, the last thought that touched him was, _I need a way to fight. I need a way to kill these things._

_I need a way to save my friends._

And for the first time, he heard something answer him, a voice that seemed to come from all around and from the part of himself where he kept everything he never wanted to think about.

_You want answers, little pawn? Everything comes to me eventually. You might not like what you find._

The voice took on a mocking tone.

_Poseidon's favorite son!_

He was underwater again, but this wasn't the battle with Oceanus. The light was brighter, and there were more sea plants. This was shallower water.

There was a giant, multi-legged monster with four huge lobster claws. It was rearing and slashing like Freddy Kreuger on speed, but Percy realized that he wasn't alarmed. The other guys seemed to have it covered.

A group of young merfolk were laying into the monster with spears and nets. Percy's eyes seemed drawn to the one in the middle. He had a bronze-tipped trident in one hand and a cutlass at his hip, and greenish blue skin the color of coral dust. There was a woven kelp necklace with five smooth shell beads at his throat. His first guess was that this was a demigod from Athos and Bythos's camp, but something seemed off. Something was missing.

He watched the guy with the cutlass as the monster's body collapsed into a pile of sand. What was up with him?

The dream shifted, and the young merman was talking to an older one who was making slow gestures with his webbed old-guy hands. Percy strained but couldn't quite make out what they were saying. The hero nodded solemnly and headed off. Two other merfolk, a boy and a girl, caught up with him, and they swam together. They were carrying weapons and wearing kelp slings that might have been backpacks. Groups of three... A quest?

It was hard to tell with the weird-shaped mouth, but the older merman seemed to smile, forming little lines around his flashing eyes. Percy's own narrowed suspiciously.

Percy didn't know why he was dreaming about this guy, but after a while, his adventures started to seem pretty cool. He had six beads at his neck now. Then nine. Then he stopped wearing the necklace. As Percy watched the blue guy and his friends take out huge sea monsters and retrieve magical items from trapped trenches, his fishtailed body stopped looking freakish and seemed strong. His jagged teeth stopped looking creepy and seemed like a dashing pirate smile. The Nereid that he saved from an aquatic drakon certainly seemed to think so.

Whatever it was that was so off about this guy, he clearly had style coming out his gills. It was taking a minute for Percy's brain to process the underwater-speak, but when the green dude followed up a spear-strike to a monster's throat with, "Toss that past your baleen and filter-feed it," he snorted out loud. How come no one had heard of this guy?

One of the others shouted something, a series of clicks and hisses that Percy realized was probably the dude's name. Yeah, that wasn't fitting on any business cards.

"Careful!" the language wasn't Greek or English, but Percy got the gist. "Having the sea lord's favor doesn't make you any less mortal."

Merguys counted as mortal? Percy had never thought about it. He felt a funny pang, realizing how little he knew about the undersea world. That's what it was, he realized. The other mer-people in his dream were demigods, children of Pleione or Nereus or maybe even Oceanus or Poseidon. This guy wasn't. He wasn't just beating monsters and taking names. He doing it without an asterisk.

He was talking to the old guy again, telling him how had gotten a set of monster scales. They shone like opals in the dim light. Spoils from a quest. During the story, the old guy laughed twice. At the end, he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder and told him how the witch Circe would be glad to trade the scales for a potion that would allow him to travel long distances overland so he could rescue a lost friend.

"Nice disguise," muttered Percy.

In one way, the blue dude reminded Percy of Paul in front of an English class, except instead of talking about Chaucer so that it _almost_ made sense, he was disemboweling sea monsters with an impressive variety of pointy weapons. What was that word Annabeth had made him learn to pronounce? _Arete_. Excellence. Being fantastic at whatever your thing was. This was a guy who had met his potential and then some. No wonder he got to hang out with the cool kids.

Percy watched as another monster crumbled into silt in the sluggish current. Full mortal or not, Percy wanted to _be_ that guy _so_ bad. This dude could have knocked Chrysaor on his gold-plated butt in the first round. He could have saved those sea creatures in Atlanta. He could have gotten Beckindorf off the _Princess Andromeda_. He could have saved all of them.

Percy was slowly getting used to constant changes of time and place. This one had been a two-man fight, and the other guy had made the kill. "Well struck, lord," he said.

The other guy lifted his helmet off his dark hair and answered, "It's been years since you were my student at the Camp Beneath the Waves, friend. Call me Triton."

Wait, _what?_

Dark hair, two fishtails, pearl-studded armor. It was hard to tell without the snide comments, but yep, that was him. So minor gods got to go on quests in the ocean? Only when it was a certain kind of monster? There was so much he didn't know. And Chiron's brothers didn't "associate with Poseidon's brood," but Triton used to be on their staff?

The hero made some kind of polite answer, and Percy found himself nodding. Percy had known better than to cash in Apollo's offer of driving lessons, and this guy knew better than to think he was really on a first-name basis with Poseidon's—what had he called himself?—_son and heir._

Percy started to wonder how much time the dream had covered. This guy wasn't a kid any more. It was hard to tell his age underwater, but he clearly had one. There were lines around his eyes almost like the ones Poseidon had in human form, but he didn't have that sense of timelessness about him, not even the way some of the legion veterans at New Rome did. He'd been at this a _long_ time. This is what heroes became if they didn't die or lose their faith—more experienced, more capable, just _more_.

It looked like he was still going on quests, but it was getting more complicated, harder for Percy to piece out what was happening. Something happened that might have been the return of a stolen gem. One time, he caught a strange hippogriff with pure black scales and fiery eyes, but it didn't seem like he was supposed to harm it. And he teamed up with Triton at least two more times.

Sometimes the hero talked to the old guy and sometimes he didn't. The guy was acting like the oracle, giving predictions and useless advice that turned out to be right. Percy was pretty sure he knew what that was all about, and he wasn't the only one.

"Ready the hippogriffs, friend," said Triton. "I'll only be a moment."

The hero nodded and swam off, leaving Triton to cross his arms at the decrepit merman.

"He knows it's you, you realize."

The old guy raised an eyebrow. The water around him seemed to shimmer, and suddenly a human-looking guy with black hair and a trident was standing on the ocean floor.

"Of course he does," Poseidon answered. "He figured it out during his second quest. But the disguises are traditional. I had my doubts about a fully mortal champion, but he's worked out well."

"She appreciates it," Triton said, "even if she doesn't admit it."

"You do not need to play the messenger between your mother and me." Poseidon sounded like he'd said that phrase many times. "We'll solve our problems on our own."

"If the two of you could only—"

"Your mother is everything I could want in a queen," Poseidon cut him off. "And you are everything we could want in a son. You must learn to be content with that." Percy stepped back. From what the last dream had shown him, Poseidon had only married Amphitrite as part of some kind of deal—maybe she hadn't wanted to marry him either—and now they were fighting. Sounded like they had been for a while.

Percy put the pieces together: Poseidon was using this mortal, Triton's friend, as his agent, sending him where a god couldn't go, and it wasn't just because he was awesome. It sounded like his dad might not _have_ any demigod kids. Maybe this was during the early days of the Oath of the Big Three. Wait, no. That had only covered half-_human_ kids. This could have happened at any time.

"He was one of my best pupils at the Camp Beneath the Waves. There's nothing like training someone who enjoys the art that much," Triton was saying. "I'm glad I went back as a teacher. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it."

Poseidon got quiet, and Percy got the impression that Triton had said the wrong thing. "You may speak of that as you like," Poseidon said again, "but not to me."

"Still?" asked Triton.

"Still."

The dream didn't give Percy any clues as to what that meant. It was like a completely unfunny in-joke. He realized with a pang that Triton knew their dad a _lot_ better than he did.

A shadow appeared over the rock ridge. The hero was coming back, probably to find out what was taking Triton so long. When he arrived, Poseidon was in old-guy form again. "Farewell, young adventurers, and may the Fates be kind. And you—" he addressed Triton, blinking as if his old eyes couldn't see well "—you might want to get that rash looked at. Skin barnacles do not help you with the ladies."

"Please forgive him for speaking so familiarly, lord," the mer-guy asked Triton quietly as they hurried away. "He's very old. I doubt he even knows what he's saying."

Triton gave a long-suffering sigh. "You'd be surprised how often that's true."

"I... huh?"

"Never mind."

The scene changed again. Percy recognized where they were. This was ...his dad's palace? He'd only seen a small part of the place during the Titan war, and they'd been under attack then. But the cyclops honor guard and the big thrones with Poseidon and Amphitrite on them were a pretty strong hint.

Percy's first trip to Olympus had been at age twelve, and he remembered how terrified he'd been. However, this was a seasoned, experienced hero being brought before the throne. The hero spread his arms wide so that he sank lower in the water. Maybe that was like bowing.

The hero hadn't looked up. So slightly that Percy wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been watching, Poseidon nodded toward Amphitrite. She didn't seem to do anything except look at the man, but Percy got the impression that something was happening. It was strange to see her seem anything but hostile, but there she was, calm and intent, quietly powerful.

"What do you see?" Poseidon asked in Greek. "You read souls better than anyone I know. Can we trust him?"

In the back of his mind, he remembered Hazel saying something about her time in the Underworld, how the judges could see straight into her memories because she hadn't had any mortal life to hide things from them. Percy was suddenly sure that that was what Amphitrite was doing. She was trying to see through the hero to whatever he truly was.

And she couldn't do it.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, my lord. His mortality. I can only see the edges."

He wondered why the hero didn't look up. Maybe he didn't know the language.

"This is important, my love," Poseidon said. "There are strange beasts rising. If it's what I suspect, it will need a guardian."

Amphitrite had gone stiff. "_That_ creature," she said in a voice like volcanic ash, "does not need a guardian. It needs a spear through its eyes."

"That's not what Hestia thinks," Poseidon answered measuredly, "and it's not what I think."

Amphitrite exhaled, the corner of her mouth turning down bitterly. Whatever her deal with strange beasts was, she disliked them even more than she disliked Percy. "I suppose, if this agent of yours can find it before Zeus does, then it might be ...leverage."

"We'll need it if we're to take advantage of the situation in the world above."

"You do look more yourself than you have in centuries," Amphitrite admitted. She looked at the hero again. "I still don't see anything. Sometimes with demigods..." She shook her head. "His list of accomplishments is considerable, especially the matter with Pleione, and Bythos says he's trustworthy. Our son has quested with him. What does he think?"

Percy watched Poseidon look off to the side. Amphitrite did a quick double-take. The meaning of the exchange was clear:

_I wasn't planning on telling him, actually._

_You WHAT?_

It would have been funny if it weren't so weird. Poseidon and his wife might have been "my lord" and "my queen" out loud, but the nonverbal communication was pretty darn close to the bone. Fighting or not, these two knew all of each other's cues.

"If I'd told him it was even possible, then he'd have already found a way to take the quest himself. He's too good at court politics," Poseidon explained. "Takes after his mother."

If Amphitrite was pleased by the compliment, she didn't show it. "You're right, my lord," she said. "I suppose if it must be done..." she stared hard at the hero, who hadn't moved the whole time he was being discussed. That was one nice thing about being full mortal; he could probably sit still without feeling like his legs were twitching off ...if he'd had legs. Amphitrite turned her head to the side, as if something about the hero confused her. "What..?" she trailed off, turning back to Poseidon.

He made a small gesture with one hand, as if to say, _I know, right?_ There was _something_ about this guy, even when he was perfectly still.

Poseidon leaned forward in his chair and switched back to the underwater language:

"Ordinarily, the ancient laws governing gods and mortals do not permit me to issue a quest in person, but the circumstances are unique," he said as the hero looked up, his glowing eyes showing both fear and trust. Triton had been right. He did know that it had been Poseidon guiding him all those years, but he also knew that this was not the same thing. "There are rumors of a creature," Poseidon continued. "You will find it, and you will bring it here to us."

The hero was silent as Poseidon described the strange beast, where it had been sighted, how best to lure it. Even in the weird clicking language, the meaning was the same.

"You won't let me down, I hope."

"I won't let you down, my lord," he answered.

The dream blurred again, and the hero was in the abalone-lined courtyard, probably only minutes later. Percy had seen part of this place when he'd visited the palace, from the other side. It was a lot nicer when it wasn't serving as a makeshift field hospital.

"What did he say?" Triton asked quickly. Weird. Why hadn't he been in the throne room?

"He's heard rumors that a certain monster may have returned from Tartarus. Some kind of serpent calf. He wants me to find it," he said, looking forward as if he were doing the math in his head. "I'll need a tracker. Do you think Alcmene is up to it? Afros says she's the one who found the young leviathan last year."

"Serpent calf," Triton said, stopping short (which, underwater, meant you kept moving, just slower and usually straight into something). He recovered, correcting his course. "The ophiotaurus. He told you to find the ophiotaurus."

There had been a little too much snap on that _you_. Percy had seen enough grumbling after quest assignments to know when someone thought they'd been passed over. He could even empathize a little. Triton was pretty badass. It wasn't really clear why Poseidon would pick this hero and not him to protect Bessie. Heck, why not send both of them?

Triton gave what was clearly a forced smile. "If anyone can do it, it would be..." and he closed his mouth. He couldn't say it. He just couldn't say that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the best man for the job. Percy wasn't sure he could blame him. When the stakes were high, it was hard to pass someone else the knife and trust him to do the right thing, even if that someone had been your friend.

The hero hadn't noticed. He'd started rambling like Grover when he'd had too many espressos. "I've always felt as though I had his favor—those dreams I told you about—but to actually meet him in person, without him being in disguise or anything. I had no _idea_..." the man's gills fluttered in what Percy guessed was an exhale. "Your father is _amazing_."

And Percy was expecting Triton to roll his shoulders and say _Yes. Yes he is,_ just like when they'd joked together a hundred times about a hundred other things.

Instead he turned toward the hero and asked, "How long would you say we've known each other, friend?"

"Most of my life," he answered, "ever since you brought me to camp as a boy."

"An honor never before given to any of your people who lacked godly blood."

The man's eyebrows rippled. Percy gathered that Triton didn't usually bring up his ancestry. "Yes, my lord," he answered, as if he'd just remembered that the _my lord_ part was important.

"And how many quests have we completed together?" he asked.

"Together? Seventeen," he said without hesitating, as if he knew them so well that he didn't need to count.

"But you've done more," Triton pointed out.

"Only because the ancient laws forbid gods from acting directly in certain matters," the hero answered. "It has been my honor to do Poseidon's will when you could not."

Percy was sure the hero hadn't meant it, but the _when you could not_ seemed to hang suspended in the water around them. That had been the Wrong Thing to Bring Up with a capital W-T-Butt-Out.

"It's an important mission," Triton admitted. "Killing the ophiotaurus."

He hero hesitated as if not sure he should answer. Finally, "He did not say to kill it, my lord."

Triton didn't respond, but Percy was sure he'd been expecting this. "Who knows if it's even returned?" he asked. "These could be only rumors. Someone may have seen a group of humans in one of their strange ships and thought it was the serpent bull. Even if there is something for you to find, this quest could take years."

"They say the creature can appear in any body of water, even inland. It will be difficult," the hero agreed. "But if it has returned from Tartarus, I will find it."

"Before you leave," said Triton, "there is something that I wish to attempt, and you're the only one I want by my side." He put his hand on the other man's shoulder. "One last fight together, old friend."

It was suddenly later, hours or days. The sea floor rolled heavily beneath them, thick layers of deep gray sand giving way to jagged rock. There would be no reefs this deep, no light the way humans understood light. Triton and the hero had both come heavily armed. A crevice appeared at the edge of Percy's vision. From the distance, it appeared to be full of holes like Swiss cheese, but each one was probably the size of a double-decker bus.

"I can't believe you knew where this thing was nesting and didn't tell Afros and Bythos," said the hero.

"It wasn't here until a short while ago," answered Triton. "And what if I had told? Half their campers would have gotten themselves devoured trying to send the Tripled Death back to Tartarus." Triton gave a tight smile.

The hero checked his spears and adjusted his coral-trimmed breastplate. "Not a job for new blood," he agreed. "How do we lure it out?"

"You've already guessed it," said Triton.

The blue guy looked confused for a second, then smiled knowingly. He unsheathed his cutlass and carefully made small cut in the edge of his left arm, letting thick, warm globules of dark blood out into the water. Triton narrowed his eyes and the current shifted, carrying the bait out into the canyon.

Huh. Most monsters preferred demigod to other foods. They could have brought a camper along or at least asked for a blood sample. Still, there had to be one that liked mer-mortal snacks.

The canyon was doing something strange to the water currents. This far down, the bottomflow should be so sluggish that it was almost still, but not here. Some of these breaks in the canyon had to open up elsewhere, allowing crossflow. Riptides at a thousand feet.

At first, nothing happened. Then there was a sound like sixty el train engines starting up at the same time, like boulders crashing against each other. Something the size of an SUV moved at the edge of one of the caves, heavy and heaving and misshapen.

"There," said Triton, gesturing with his weapon. The hero nodded. Percy blinked and he realized that he wasn't looking at the monster. He was looking at one the curled edge of one flipper. The next sound was like three thunderstorms fighting each other, howling in disharmony.

This guy had fought some big beasties, but this one made the word "monster" feel inadequate. It reminded Percy of Kampê, so old that it didn't have a shape. Its heads seemed to be like snakes, then like sharks, then like something older than dinosaurs, all eyes and spines and mandibles. It pushed itself from the crevice with heavy limbs that seemed like flippers and a crab's jointed legs. Looking at it was worse than trying to read cursive. He could only imagine how hard it was for a mortal guy to see what he was doing, but he did.

"Strategy theta," said Triton, and the two of them moved into action, the hero rushing low while Triton drew all three sets of eyes. The guy was amazing. The guy and Triton _together_ seemed impossible. A creature this big created its own water currents. It opened a mouth and drew in enough water to fill three city pools. The hero rode the wave in and pulled away at the last second, driving one spear into one pitch-black eye. He drew another and continued, following the flow down the creature's back as Triton distracted the heads with his trident.

There was something old about this beast, but there was also something simple. The limbs were thick and slow, like a crocodile's, but it made up for that with its darting necks. Percy had a strange idea that this thing had been the rough draft for the hydra.

The mer-guy was smiling as he dodged a swipe from the massive, eel-like tail. Triton was watching him as they regrouped, his mouth a hard line.

Percy had seen that look before, on Daedelus's face right before Perdix had taken a header into the Aegean.

"No way," he said out loud, so surprised that he actually pointed. "No way."

Triton's eyes narrowed as he switched weapons and charged the third head with his sword, severing four feet of snakelike tongue. The hero came up beside him. "I have an idea!" he shouted as the first head, suddenly shaped like a sea dinosaur's, took a swipe at them.

"Do you?" responded Triton, something toxic in his tone.

"No _way_," Percy shouted. "_He's your friend_."

Sure, Triton had been a bit of a jerk when they'd met, but there had been a battle on. Tyson said that Triton was a good guy!

The hero swam back into the fray, taking his spear and jabbing the second head, a huge, mandibled trilobite, in the side, then disappearing down the trunklike neck toward the body. The second head lunged, hitting the third in the jaw. The third snapped back, and they started to fight. His execution was perfect. It was like watching the Olympics. And it wasn't going to matter one bit.

"So he's better than you at something," Percy was screaming. "So Dad likes him. _So what?_"

Triton couldn't hear him. A dumb animal like Bessie could still see Percy when he was less than a ghost, but Triton _couldn't hear him_.

Somehow, from the part of his gut that was the ocean, Percy knew, _You are better than this_. Some of his dad's other kids were jerks and monsters, but not him, not the first brother.

Percy looked back toward the hero, hoping that he'd figure what was going on and get the heck out of there, but it wasn't going to happen. He'd never been sabotaged before, not in a million quests. A guy didn't learn what that looked like that until he'd been bitten at least once. Or if he had a disloyal bone in his own body, and he didn't.

Heads two and three were occupied, but the first head, fanged like a komodo dragon, was still focused on Triton. The hero moved in. Another inch and he'd have made it. Triton had closed his eyes, willing the water to move. The hero was pulled too far to the right, into the current. He shot toward the creature's leftmost head just a little too fast.

Percy tried to yell, to wave his arms, to control the water around him, to do _something_, but instead of pulling to the side of the first head, the hero slipped into its mouth. He tried to wedge his spear between the teeth, stop his descent, but Percy heard the fibers crack.

The jaws reared, a high, fanged tidal wave about to crash down.

He threw up his arms to protect his head and managed to miss most of the rows of teeth, but the pressure and the heat inside the mouth nearly made him pass out.

The jaws opened for another try. Through the glowing green of the merman's eyes staring up at the rows of teeth, Percy saw that the hero knew that he was going to die, crushed if not swallowed. Then, as if he were inside his skin, his heart, his brain, his eyes, he could feel the hero reaching for something, but it was like nails scrabbling at a smooth marble wall.

The teeth came down again, smashing the hero's sword arm, but he hung on to the shattered spear with the other. By now, Triton was calling his name over and over. Jerk actually sounded upset. Then Percy felt cold, colder than his dunk in the Styx. What if Triton hadn't been trying to move the hero _into_ the current? Maybe he'd just wanted him to miss his shot. Maybe he'd just wanted the hero to look stupid and have to ask for help before he left on his big mission. This might have just been about a jealous, petty god putting the proud mortal in his place. But Triton wasn't Athena or Hera or Poseidon. It had gone way too far.

Percy could feel what the hero was doing, and he knew. Mount Saint Helens. He was reaching for the ocean. He was reaching for power, but he wasn't a demigod. There was nothing there. He could claw his mortal nature to rags and still not save himself.

The glowing green eyes widened as the world seemed to slow down. Percy had just enough time to wonder why it would even occur to a mortal to try to—

And the wall gave way in a blaze of blue-gray light as something made out of courage, loyalty, hope and sorrow cut through the world like a knife.

.

.

.

They were back at the courtyard. A team of mermen and cyclopes were dragging in the monster's corpse using kelp ropes. For some reason, this one hadn't dissolved into dust when it had died. Maybe its whole body was a spoil of war. The cyclops boss was talking about turning its skin into armor, its teeth into blades and commemorative figurines. The whole crew was thrilled.

Percy looked at the first head, the one that had killed his hero. It didn't look burned or electrocuted. There was a single angry red stab wound from the crown of its scaly head straight down into the roof of its mouth, or maybe in the other direction.

The throne room was almost empty. No guards. No servants. No bright fish swimming in and out of the windows like songbirds. Poseidon's face was like a granite block. Triton was kneeling in front of him with his head down. Percy realized with a deep chill that he had _never_ seen his father this angry before.

"In the past four years, the Tripled Death has destroyed three villages and devoured two pods of Delphin's daughters," Triton was saying. "Killing the beast opens up the entire west canyon area for settlement. He was the cause of that, Father. There is talk of naming the first colony after him."

Poseidon didn't answer, just looked at Amphitrite with none of the subtlety he'd shown when sending the hero to find the ophiotaurus.

Percy watched, and he knew what she must be seeing. Jealousy. Deceit. Friendship. Grief. Regret. But none of that could tell her what had happened. The fact that he was sorry didn't mean he hadn't done it on purpose. The fact that he'd resented the man didn't mean it hadn't been an accident. They would always think he was lying, no matter what he said. Finally, Amphitrite closed her eyes.

"He was only a mortal, my lord."

Poseidon looked at his wife for a long time. Then, barely speaking above a whisper, he said, "Leave us."

Amphitrite looked at her son and then back at Poseidon. Percy recognized real fear. Then, graceful as a dancer, she sank down into a bow.

"Amphitrite," Poseidon said, sounding as weary as if he'd survived a four-day battle. "Get up."

She didn't move an inch. "You won't?" she asked.

"Do you not know me?" he asked in a whisper.

Amphitrite looked up then, and her eyes seemed to hold an accusation. Percy didn't know what she was thinking, but the possibilities weren't heartening. One god couldn't _kill_ another, but there were plenty of other things on the menu.

"I won't," he promised.

"Swear it, husband."

Poseidon shook his head, as if he couldn't believe she was asking, "I swear on the River Styx that our son's punishment will be no more than is right and necessary. Are you satisfied, woman?" he finished with some anger of his own.

Amphitrite rose, elegant as all creation, touched Triton on the back of the head, and left.

Triton watched her go and then turned back to his father. "I'm telling the truth," he insisted. "He came with me of his own free will. I didn't even command—" He stopped, probably because of the way Poseidon was glaring at him.

"Why?" he asked coldly.

"I don't know. I just couldn't stand it." He closed his eyes. "What does it matter, Father? Mother is right. He was a mortal."

"A mortal who had my favor _and yours_. He could have returned to his own people years ago. Instead he served our family. He had quests instead of children. How are we to rule them if they cannot trust us?"

"That never mattered to you before."

"The world above is changing, Triton. Rome has fallen, and we need agents if we are to shape what rises in its place. The children of my fellow Olympians have not been idle, and now the bane of Olympus may have returned—"

"And you didn't trust me to guard it!" Triton demanded. "_Me!_"

Poseidon leveled him with a glare. "You know perfectly well why I don't want you near that creature." There was a long silence. "As far as anyone outside this room knows—" he said the hero's name "—died during the completion of a great and noble deed. Afros and Bythos will probably discern otherwise, but they will understand the political consequences of making any public accusations. If his people were to learn what you have done—"

"I didn't—"

_Silence_. Percy didn't even think Poseidon had said it out loud.

"You will pay for this discreetly. If not for the intercession of your noble mother, you would face worse." Poseidon continued speaking but Percy could no longer understand all of what was being said, like the conversation was in 3D and he could only see one paper-thin slice of it. Triton's arms dropped to his sides as he stared into space.

"For how long?" Triton asked.

"Until I tell you that you may return."

"If this is what fate has given me to face," Triton said, seeming to recover. "I do not cower in fear, not even before your anger, Father." He was saying he'd take his punishment like a man. Percy got it. There were plenty of times that he'd been punished for what felt like nothing. That time he'd dunked his whole class in the shark tank and little Mindie Rosenbaum had been so scared that she'd cried for her mom in front of everyone? He had taken every scrap of the consequences without a word. He had to go _through_ before he could get _out_.

"I didn't murder him," Triton said, but it sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself. "He fought bravely. He died bravely, and—"

"You knew that he was no match for this beast, not without half a hundred of his fellows."

"But he was," he said, sounding almost sad.

Poseidon didn't look used to being contradicted, but it was true. The guy had almost held his own.

"I didn't strike the creature's death blow. He was pulled toward its mouth and—"

The sea god's eyes got even narrower. _And what?_

"And ...and he seemed to draw a weapon from nowhere," Triton said. "It was made of ...I don't know what that is. Father—"

Poseidon raised his head, as if each word were a ghost. "What?" he asked.

"It was as if the blade was." Triton stopped, shaking his head. "I could _see_ it, Father. Courage that could pierce bone. Wielding it extinguished him. It was that, and not the beast, that truly killed him." _Or me_ he seemed to be saying. "My lord, have you known anyone who was capable of such a thing?"

"Yes," Poseidon answered.

Triton rose, seeming to steel himself. Wherever he was going, it was as good as prison.

"Triton," said Poseidon.

The lesser god turned.

"You are never to attempt to use this blade of the spirit yourself," Poseidon said, and more than said. The words settled down on Triton like cords, like chains. "You will not speak of it. You will not ask about it. You will _never_ allow your mother to learn of it." He paused. "And if anyone but myself should mention the matter in your presence, you will not hear or remember."

Triton opened his mouth but no sound came. The elder god's command held him, and he could not even reply.

"Now go," Poseidon said. "Take your punishment with the dignity due a god."

Percy stared into his father's pensive eyes, but he felt himself starting to wake. It was too late. He hadn't contacted his friends.

But he _had_ found his answer. Unfortunately, it looked like that answer might kill him.

.

.

.

He hadn't been ready for this, and she should have known it. They hadn't been ready for this.

They'd hugged the shores of the Acheron for what might have been a day. There was no way to tell with no sun, no clocks and no more than an hour of sleep at a time. Percy was getting worse. He'd dreamed about the ophiotaurus again—he kept saying "Bessie"—and she'd caught the words "last light."

They'd camped one more time. She knew he'd been having weird dreams—they had to be at least as bad as her own—but he'd seemed to have a handle on it until now. This time, he'd woken up shaking. This had to be worse.

"I'm... I'm me, aren't I?"

"Yeah," she said, her hands going to his shoulders. "Yeah, Percy, you're you." _Di immortales_, had Tartarus tried to convince him that he was a monster or something? That evil whisper hadn't been able to convince _her_ to stick Riptide in his guts and leave him for the scavengers, so now it was trying to make him self-destruct?

"It's not true," he said like a prayer. "I bet none of it is true."

"Percy, you're starting to scare me," she lied. He'd been scaring her for years.

It took them another day to make it to the encampment. At least Annabeth thought it was a day. It was just as well that they hadn't been able to make contact with the others. They wouldn't have been able to use anything they'd learned.

By the time they got there, she had a plan. It wasn't a _good_ plan, but minus re-dunking both of them in the River Styx—which wasn't making any appearances—it was the best they were going to get. Long shots were the only shots there were. At least Tartarus had the space. Her thoughts were layered like the Guggenheim, but when she tried to tie them down, all she got was a backwoods lean-to.

Getting them across the Acheron took a lot of Percy's strength. They had to rest on the far side a lot longer than Annabeth had liked. Talking cost in Tartarus, but not talking about this would cost her even more.

"Percy," she said. "Did you only remember me because of the Mark of Achilles?"

He stared at the rippling Acheron before answering. Acheron. Styx. Woeful and hated.

"When I woke up in California?"

He'd told her that she was his anchor to mortal life. If Hera hadn't let him keep that memory, then the stygian power on his skin might have collapsed inward and crushed him, and he'd have been no use to her. Why else would Hera cut her a break? She'd have liked nothing better than for Athena's uppity daughter to spend months trying to get to New Rome only to find her boyfriend rebooted to his factory settings.

She waited, pushing heavy life in and out of her lungs.

"It doesn't feel like that's why I remembered you."

"But you didn't remember your mother or Grover or Tyson."

"I didn't. You're different." Answers were simple when there was so little of you left. "I used to think..." Percy started. "I used to think that if you're not you, I'm not me. I might still be a good guy, but I wouldn't be the same one."

"Used to?"

Percy had looked at her then, and in the dim light coming off Riptide she'd seen the shadows on his face, thin lines of gray where Tartarus was fighting its way into him.

And that was when he'd told her everything from his dreams. _Everything_. Things that even Nico didn't know. Putting all of it in order had burned up another layer of her self. Figuring out what to do with it...

"We can't use this, Percy," she said.

"I know."

"This is what Tartarus wants. Probably for both of us." Sacrifices to wake the goddess, deboned and pre-shelled. "I've been dreaming about you and about... Minerva. That's not Athena. Athena wouldn't... You're dreaming about your father."

"Annabeth this place is getting into our doubts. My dad is... My dad is my dad. I don't doubt you. I've never doubted you."

It took a while for the shadows on his face to mean anything, but she thought it was a smile. She'd doubted him, and they both knew it. He'd deserved it, and they knew that too.

When they'd finally heard the sounds of Enceladus's forces, Annabeth had taken one last look at him before he'd extinguished Riptide. He gripped her hand tight. "One more thing," he said quietly. "Tradition?"

It was a different kind of kiss. It didn't come from love or happiness or even the pulsing blood in his veins. It was a promise. _I'm still here_._ I'm still strong enough._

"It's too much like saying goodbye," he said quietly.

She didn't answer.

"I didn't want to act like I thought you were going to fail, like I'd never see you again. In Rome."

Annabeth felt her arms sink to her sides.

"I love you. I think I'd love you no matter who I was, but I'm not sure. So I'm saying it now."

"Percy," she said, putting metal into her voice and wishing she could still see his face. She held both his shoulders tight and she hoped it hurt, "_don't do anything stupid_." Like get himself killed out of some Tartarus-induced martyr complex. "We're doing this together."

He covered one of her hands with his, and she guessed that had been the right thing to say. Good. No dead Percys today.

But he couldn't have said it in Charleston with the sunlight blazing down on them? He couldn't have said it in Rome, with the Pantheon and the fountains and the condescending locals? Nope. She got "I love you" when they were both covered in so much monster slime that she'd throw up if there were anything in her stomach.

Well that cinched it. He really wasn't a monster posing as Percy. This was the real deal.

"Ready, Seaweed Brain?"

"Let's go, Wise Girl."

.

.

.

It would have seemed impossible even if they'd both had the Mark of Achilles, and if there had been ten of them each. But giving up wasn't in her vocabulary any more. She'd lost her knife. She'd made another from a dead monster's fangs. She'd never really noticed before, but she'd been doing that her whole life. One plan gave out under her feet, but she only dropped an inch before hitting the next one.

Enceladus hadn't put that much thought into things.

A disciplined army could survive the death of its commander. That was what an orderly chain of command was for. This was not a disciplined army. This was the dregs of the pit.

Too bad he just wouldn't _die_.

"Gorgon's blood?" barked Enceladus. A handful of Laestrygonians in makeshift lieutenant's uniforms laughed sycophantically. The heavy gash on his forearm was already healing. It was steaming a bit from the poison that had coated her knife. Her ribs were burning from where he held her in the air. "You thought that a few drops of gorgon's blood would be enough to put an end to me, to Mother Gaea's plans? It barely stings." He threw his head back and laughed. "Now where is your little son of Neptune friend? My brother wants him fitted for his chains so that he can learn obedience before he witnesses his father's death."

Annabeth winced. She'd tried not to, but she was at the end of her endurance.

Enceladus smirked. "Or has he decided to run? That would be tiresome. And typical." He threw his head back and laughed again, so deep that Annabeth could see the back of his throat.

And that was when, in full view of ogres, sphinxes and cyclopes, Annabeth lobbed a hollow bone full of Stheno's least pleasant bodily fluids straight into a giant's trachea. He dropped her, leaning forward comically. For a second, Annabeth was worried that he'd gag up the container and save himself, but the cork had come loose as planned, and the lungs were _so_ good at absorbing things.

"_You..._" Enceladus's voice was dissolving along with the rest of him. "_Die on the ...stones._"

Annabeth didn't move. That moment needed to sink in.

One of the cyclopes eyed the Laestrygonians. "What now?"

A voice from the back of the crowd called. "Who gets to eat her? It should be us!"

Annabeth's heart pounded as a shrill cyclops woman answered, "Laestrygonians ate all the harpies! The demigod girl is cyclops food!"

The lead Laestrygonian scratched his orange head, "But I didn't say—"

"No way! Cyclopes are already too fat! Too much..." the voice broke on the dust. "Too much sheep!"

There was an outraged gasp throughout the whole crowd. "_Northern_ cyclopes aren't lazy sheep-eaters!" called one of Ma Gasket's sons.

"Stupid orange-heads think we all eat the same!"

"But which one of us—"

"Shut up, tattoo face!" the voice came from the other side of the crowd this time. "Weakling laestry—fools are boring! Cyclopes will eat _you!_"

Things soon descended into a full-on shouting match. Annabeth picked up a rock and threw it. Then there was more than shouting. She ducked her head and crept away as the weapons came out.

Where was Percy? They'd agreed to regroup back at the cone-shaped rock, but there suddenly seemed to be a lot of those. She couldn't leave to look for him, and she couldn't stay in plain sight in case—

A hand descended on her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"It's me. It's me." And he had his arms around her.

"One down," she said.

"Better than none," he followed. "And I can't believe that worked."

Annabeth almost laughed. Then she felt Percy's entire body stiffen as a voice like boiling acid lanced through the stale air.

"_What is the meaning of this?_"

Annabeth cursed inwardly. She'd hoped the army would do more damage to itself before Polybotes put a stop to it. She ducked behind the stone, pulling Percy after her, quickly processing what she knew about this guy. Meant to kill Poseidon. Could turn water to poison. Shed basilisks from his hair like evil dandruff. Percy had killed him in New Rome with the help of a minor god. Sure, that was a big deal, but it didn't explain why Percy was this freaked out about him. Her brain cells were screaming as they waved goodbye, but the Doors of Death were in sight on the hill. It was time to play through the pain.

"I smell demigod!" roared the giant. Annabeth stifled a curse. Beside her, she felt Percy breathe in. His left hand was shaking, but the one holding Riptide was like a rock. _I can do this_, he seemed to say.

"Come out and face us, giant!" Percy called out, stepping into view. "Winner take all! If we defeat you, disperse this army and leave the Doors. If you win—"

"You will come quietly and allow yourself to be sacrificed to the goddess?" Polybotes asked. "You will not raise your sword to stop me when I kill your upstart father? I think not." He took a, well a _giant_ step forward. "There will be no formal duels today. You will be in fetters at my feet when Neptune breathes his last." He chuckled. "My brother would have been careful of your lives, little demigods. He said that your blood was now too potent to waste, sweetened as it is. But why feed Mother Gaea the finest first press when the rank squeezings will do the same?" And with that, the net flew, tangling Annabeths' feet. Her knife was in her hand, putting an end to the cords, but one of the uninjured ogres was moving toward her, and she could hear Riptide ringing against that foul trident as she worked.

Percy had held his own—almost—against Ares and Atlas, but he hadn't spent three days starving and tormented. She could tell by his footsteps that he wasn't going to last long. Annabeth lunged under the laestrygonian's guard. There was still enough poison on her knife to turn him to ooze.

She would like to say that she and Percy fought side by side and defeated their foe. She would like to say that Athena always had a plan. But children's practice games were not the real thing, and an enemy who could turn your blood to acid would always have the advantage.

Two hands the size of garbage pails closed around her rib cage, squeezing so hard that she thought she was drowning.

Well if she was going to go, at least it was going to be for something. She'd die like a daughter of the war goddess, accomplishing what she'd set out to do. If someone she loved lasted a little longer because of it, that was good too, even if it was only a minute. Annabeth threw her last weapon toward Polybotes' eye before the spots in front of her own could make her aim irrelevant.

Behind her, she heard a scream that couldn't possibly be Percy, and the whole Underworld seemed to flare bright blue. Worse than the scream, worse than Polybotes howling in pain as Annabeth fell to the ground, was the feeling of something vital breaking loose as all the darkness of Tartarus rushed in to take its place, as if the door had finally been opened.

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"Is this the best you can do, son of Ares?" Pelorus bellowed as he pulled Frank's arrow from his side. Gold ichor flowed onto the moon-tiled floor of the subterranean temple, but the giant didn't seem to notice as he strode toward them on heavy, purple-scaled legs, head grazing the roof. His thick hair swung with each stride and Jason could see it was braided with bones tied back with leather straps that smelled like cured human skin. Behind him, the massive Doors of Death loomed, sucking blackness pulling at his being. But then why could Jason hear what sounded like screams and battle on the other side? "The weakest of my brothers held your father captive for a year and more, usurping my destined duty of slaying him. What do you think you can do against me?"

Frank reloaded his bow. "Thought I'd kill you," he said simply, leveling his shot between the giant's eyes. Jason held his sword steady, acutely aware of Piper on his other side, of the sounds of the fight in the levels above them, where the suddenly weirdly powerful Nico and Hazel were holding off the giant's small army of Lastrygonians by themselves. Well, by themselves and with about half a million undead troops.

"Kill me? Kill _me_, warspawn?" he laughed. "I see no gods in your little band." Raising his axe, he pressed forward. "The son of this temple's _former_ master may have kept my followers occupied, but even the six of you are no match for me."

He took another step.

_Come on, Leo,_ Jason willed. _Come on_. This had been a dumb idea. Annabeth would never have let him them go through with it, but no one had come up with any better plans, and Frank had been right before.

"...and I am not alone," Pelorus finished with a smirk. Before Jason could register what he'd said, the giant turned his head, shouting, "_Mimas!_"

"Oh not this guy again," muttered Frank.

A hulking figure lurched out of the sanctuary on two twisted legs, dragging a struggling, cursing figure with the longer of his two mismatched arms. With a sneering, wordless snarl, he held up Leo by one foot for Pelorus to see.

"Very good, Brother," Pelorus said, as if patting a dog. The twisted giant gave a drooling grin. Pelorus turned back to Frank and Jason. "Did you expect this to disable me?" he asked, nudging the false floor with one foot. Leo's trap sprang into motion, scattering Greek fire at what would have been a giant's eye level. Jason shot a look at Leo. _Where's the rest of it?_ he asked with his eyes.

Leo's smile lasted half a second, but it was enough. _Message received_, thought Jason.

"Hey you guys," said Leo as he dangled upside down. "So it turns out it wasn't just one dude guarding the Doors of Death. Just found that out. But is it just me or is this guy kind of a waste of a giant?"

"Leo," said Piper, "maybe this isn't the best time for—"

"No, what was Gaea thinking?" Leo yelled animatedly. "This dude doesn't make sense!"

"Not now, Leo!" shouted Jason.

Still upside-down, Leo counted on his oil-stained fingers. "The twins were obsessed with parties, Polybotes could do that water-poison trick. Alcyoneus was made out of shineys. They all had a _thing_. What have we seen from this guy? Busted legs _on purpose_ and _that's it_ and that makes him the anti-Hephaestus? If I were Dad, I'd be super insulted." He twisted until he could look Mimas in the eye. "_What is your deal?_"

"_Not now, Leo!_"

"He should at least, I don't know, be able to shoot fire out of his hands or something. I know that's more my shtick, but—"

"_Valdez!_" bellowed Frank.

"And another thing. He's dumb as a sack of lug nuts. He didn't even remember to disarm me." Leo pulled his sword from the concealed scabbard that he hadn't been able to convince anyone else to wear, twisted upward and slashed at Mimas's wrist. A little shaky, but for a guy who didn't get much time to practice, he wasn't half bad.

Mimas hurred wordlessly as tang separated itself from blade and clanged to the floor. Before Jason's eyes, the sword dissolved into a puddle of tin and copper and leather, bits of dust and earth leaping off the ground until he was staring at two lumps of unrefined ore.

"Okay, now I get it," said Leo.

The giant beamed oafishly, as if pleased that someone found him impressive. Then Leo ignited the fur on his arms. "Mama Dirt Face should've made you fireproof!" he called out as he dropped to the floor.

"Enough chatter!" shouted Pelorus, moving faster than Jason would have expected on legs like that. There was chill whistling sound as he brought his axe down where Frank had been standing, but in Frank's place there was a swarm of bees. Pelorus struck again, bellowing in frustration as ten million tiny, stinging enemies descended on his eyes.

Leo had landed on his hands and knees but pulled himself upright quick enough, scooping up a handful of spent Greek fire and igniting the spray as the drops flew toward Mimas's face.

"Help him," Jason said to Piper as he moved toward Pelorus.

Jason heard Frank's boots hit the ground as he changed back. "I wish Percy were here," he muttered.

"We'll have to make do without him," Jason answered, looking to the darn and looming Doors.

Frank ducked out of the way of Pelorus's axe, knocking another arrow. "No, I mean this jerk is weak on his left side and Percy had this move that—"

"Wait, I remember that one," Jason answered. The strategy was useless without someone who could manipulate water. Unless... Jason held out his free arm, willing the stale air to churn. Tightening his grip on his sword, he vaulted up onto Pelorus's knee, augmenting his jump as best he could. On any other opponent, it would have been an easy decapitation.

There was a sound on the stairs behind them. Jason turned. They couldn't afford another front.

Nico appeared, scarecrow thin, holding his heavy sword too low in his spider-thin hands, but his dark eyes were bright as the mica in the granite walls.

"Where's Hazel?"

"Holding her own," Nico answered. "The dead will obey her within the temple grounds."

"I thought they desecrated the altar," said Jason.

Nico flashed a dark grin. "Funny thing about that," he said.

Behind the fire giant, the blackness beyond the doors fell silent. Someone was about to get reinforcements. Between moves, Jason breathed a silent prayer. To his father. To Percy's. To Pluto. To anyone who was listening.

Pelorus laughed, "My brothers will join us soon! Alcyoneus is eager for revenge against _you_, Frank Zhang. Your sword-arm will make a fine trophy, and I will join Porphyrion at Mount Olympus to wake the goddess!"

Nico closed his eyes, murmuring in Greek as the space beyond the doors shook with an ultra-low rumble, as if the foundations of the earth were shaking. Dust fell free of the seams in the ceiling. Loose stones cracked and dropped. The doors themselves gave a mighty heave ...and began to close.

Pelorus turned his head, and Jason screamed. Like an eagle diving. Like a wolf on the hunt. Like every particle of air as the lightning ripped it apart. He forgot everything but keeping the giant from trying to stop it, harrying his legs, his chest, his face. An axe blow sliced skin from his jaw. Beside him, he was dimly aware of Frank moving beside him, complementing his moves, of Nico chanting in Greek as a dozen of the dead appeared and put their shoulders to the doors on the mortal side.

The whole world groaned, and Jason felt the voice of Gaea in his mind, mocking, desperate, angry, triumphant, panicked. He didn't try to make out the words.

"Leo!" he called out. "Do it now!"

"Believe me, I'd love to!" Leo called back from his fight with Mimas.

The doors were more than halfway shut now, grinding hard against the earthly stones. The space between them was only wide enough for a giant now. Then it was only wide enough for a deer, and then—

Two figures in gray burst through the widening crack. One of them turned back toward the opening and turned a pursuer to dust with a leaf-shaped bronze blade.

Jason didn't waste the moment, leaping forward and driving the point of his sword hard into Pelorus's chest. But he was too far to the left. He'd missed the heart. Jason ducked down, willing his adrenaline crash to wait, and saw a gray figure with a dark head move to strike at Pelorus from the side. The other had a scrap of bubble wrap clinging to one foot.

"Percy! Annabeth!" yelled Piper, pouring triumph into her words. At some point, Nico had ducked under the giant's guard and put his hands on the doors themselves.

Jason couldn't look, not when his energy was fading and Pelorus had him in his sights. One massive hand covered the unfortunately non-lethal wound in his torso, guttering ichor. "A fine trick, son of the usurper."

Working from long reflex, Jason maneuvered to the side until he could feel an ally close beside him.

"A little help!" yelled Leo. A scarecrow-thin figure that Jason realized was probably Annabeth broke free of Percy and ran toward Leo's voice. A second later, Percy lifted Riptide as if to give a practice swing. Instead he threw the blade straight at Annabeth. With Jason's mouth hitting the floor, she caught it, using the inertia from the throw and bringing it down on Mimas's arm in one perfect motion. Riptide did not break, and the twisted giant howled and let go of Piper.

Nico hadn't broken his chant. The ancient words, half-comprehensible in the chaos, seemed to force the doors to give. Inch by inch, the space between them shrank.

"No!" cried Pelorus, breaking off the fight, giving Jason his first good look at Percy since Rome.

The cracked lips and hollow eyes he'd expected, but Percy's skin was riddled with dark gray streaks, as if a thousand leeches had been burrowing just under the surface and really had a thing for blood vessels. Something gray and flaking was hanging off him, covered in slime like the world's grossest hoodie. Percy's eyes turned to the fountains that lined the edge of the chamber. His mouth opened as if he were going to say something, but Pelorus howled and aimed an axe blow straight for his head. Percy ducked and rolled—not as nimbly as Jason remembered—and came up on the side. Jason struck toward Pelorus's kidney, but the giant deftly blocked him. What was Percy still doing over here? He'd given away his only weapon.

Jason blinked. No, not his _only_ weapon. There was something else in his hand, something that gave off a layered, humming energy like a lightning bolt about to crack. Jason blinked hard. One second it seemed to be a spear; the next it was a short sword, and the next—

Pelorus's axe caught Jason in the leg, cutting halfway through the thick bronze greave. The next thing he knew, he'd crumpled to the floor, spine arched in pain. Through the crimson streaks across his vision, he realized that his leg was probably broken. With a chuckle, the giant reversed his grip and struck backwards with the thick handle, hitting Frank solidly in the throat. He fell backwards, bow clattering to the earth.

"Leo!" Jason shouted, swallowing the bile in his mouth, "we can't wait any more!"

"I'm kind of busy over here, bro!" he shouted over the clatter. Annabeth, Piper and Nico had managed to back Mimas into a corner, but the creature had strong arms and a killer reach.

"I'm not kidding, Leo!"

"Okay, _fine_." Leo reached into his toolbelt and pulled out the detonator.

"Percy—" Jason murmured, but Frank was recovering. He grabbed Percy by one slimy sleeve and yanked him to the ground right as the charges blew.

Just as he'd been meant to, Pelorus braced for an explosion—not for the dozen thick grappling cords laced with wires of drawn bronze. His axe clattered to the floor as his two legs were pulled together. He fell like a tall tree that had met its first chainsaw. From the far corner, a pinned Mimas was whining in confusion.

"How..." he muttered.

"Turns out that Vulcan's forges at Pompei were still operable," Frank croaked as he staggered to his feet. "And I have a friend who's good at moving things through stone. We figured if that jar could hold Ares and Nico, Leo could recycle it into something that could manage your lame carcass."

They really should be finishing the job, but all Pelorus's trash talk probably entitled Frank to a little gloating. Frank's strategy, Hazel's powers, and Leo's skill. They'd been Juno's three furies.

"You're still no match for me, son of Ares!"

Frank managed a short, barking laugh. "That's the problem. Gaea made you to fight _Ares_, and from what I hear, he was just a big bully. I'm the son of the _soldier_ god, idiot."

Pelorus struggled against the restrains, but they held. "You still cannot slay me, warspawn! You are alone here. We cannot be killed without the help of a god!"

Frank shrugged. "Well, we hoped Nico's dad would put in an appearance, but it's important to enter battle prepared." Jason saw a look of pain cross Percy's face, but Frank didn't seem to notice. "We don't need to kill you, just keep you from causing any more trouble. Who knows? Jupiter and company might even let you live."

Nico's voice rose to a shout. The space between the doors thinned to a black line and finally vanished. The pulse of dark energy that filled the room was blindingly pure, a shadow to put an end to every shining lie. Nico fell to his knees, breathing hard. By Olympus... Had they _done_ it?

Pelorus spat. "I will not bow to the traitor son of Kronos!" His craggy muscles surged against the cables, and Jason heard what felt unsettlingly like metal warping. Frank hurried forward and kicked Pelorus in the head, but it looked like he didn't get knocked out easily. Frank snatched up Jason's sword, slashing hard at the giant's hands, his face, his chest, but he couldn't stop Pelorus from rising. Jason tried to drag himself toward them, but his leg flared and his peripheral vision went dark. He could _not_ black out now. He looked toward Mimas. There had only been so much bronze in that jar, so Leo had put more than half in Pelorus's trap, hoping that his deformed brother wouldn't be able to get as much leverage.

"Leo?" called Frank. "You _did_ tell Hazel that the two sets of wires were different, right?"

"Um," answered Leo.

"Your paltry traps cannot hold me," Pelorus snarled, lifting his axe from the ground as he advanced on Frank. Jason saw Piper step up beside him, but even the two of them together wouldn't last long, and Leo and Annabeth were busy with Mimas. And Pelorus knew it. "As Gaea lives, as long as I live, I will never—"

Percy surged forward, putting all of his weight behind a single stab into the monster's side.

There was a flash of blue-gray light and a hissing sound as if all the water in the air were boiling off. A look of confusion crossed Pelorus's face.

"How..." he managed.

Percy doubled over, his free hand going to where his ribs met his stomach. His whole body spasmed hard, like still water breaking on a rock. Pelorus crumbled away, leaving only Percy, half-kneeling in a cloud of monster dust.

Frank's mouth was hanging open as he stared ahead. "What the..."

With visible difficulty, Percy straightened and turned toward the far corner of the room, the strange blue blade pulsing as if it had a heartbeat, like light reflected off rippling water. Annabeth gripped Mimas's greasy hair, pulling back his head as Percy slashed his throat. Jason heard Leo mutter, "Heck yeah" as the giant disintegrated.

There was a strangling noise that sounded way too much like Percy's voice. The palms of his hands hit the rocks as his legs gave way. The shining blade flickered and dissolved, seeming to climb up Percy's arm into his chest until it was nowhere to be seen. No one moved.

_What in the world?_ Somehow, Percy and Annabeth had found a godly blade while they were in Tartarus, but... But that didn't make sense. What god would find them there? If using a god's weapon were enough, why would Bacchus have risked helping them in person? Why wouldn't Juno have lent them what they needed or gotten other gods to do so?

Annabeth tugged at the collar of her shirt, spider-thin fingers working to lift it. Piper came up beside her and helped her pull the funny woven cloth over her head. She let it fall and stepped slowly toward Percy. One gray-white hand touched the back of his neck. He put his arms around her knees, burying his face in her filthy jeans as his shoulders shook.

Jason looked away. Ally or not, this was the boy who hadn't backed down in Kansas or Charleston or the Coliseum. He'd cooperated, and he'd been a team player, but he'd never _backed down_. Watching him show weakness was like seeing Lupa and her pack reduced to roadkill.

"Guys," Frank was the first to speak. "You made it back," he said. "You—you _won_." He walked toward them as Percy got back to his feet. Neither of them looked at Frank. Neither of them had looked at anyone this whole time. "You made it back," he repeated. "You escaped from—"

Frank stopped as Percy reached out and put a hand on him, right where his neck met his jaw. Frank looked to Jason as if to say "Okay, that's weird." Jason watched Percy's lower lip twitch as he stared into Frank's face, like he wasn't sure Frank was real. The gray streaks were still there, but they looked half healed, more like outlines of themselves. Somehow that made them seem deeper, like scar tissue over a cut with the blade still in it.

Percy let go of Frank and looked around, as if he were looking for something. From the far side of the room, Jason heard swearing in Greek.

Nico had pulled himself out of whatever faint that closing the doors had thrown at him. He lurched forward, his Stygian iron sword clattering to the stone behind him. He crossed the distance in three shaky steps and took Percy's face in his hands.

"Percy..." he said, his pale skin turning gray as he searched the other boy's dead eyes. For the first time, Jason noticed a green-black film, an eerie light that made his skin crawl. "Percy, _what have you done?_"

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drf24


	3. One

Percy, Annabeth, Jason and their friends are copyright R. Riordan.

This contains spoilers for _Mark of Athena_ and books preceding. Because I have not read _House of Hades_ yet, nothing in here can be called a spoiler, but I might have guessed correctly in a few places. One plot element is based the cover art. You do not need to read "Next of Kin" to understand this story.

Some of these scenes were written months ago. Others I put together just now. There's a lot of jumping around with respect to place and time. Concrit and heads-ups for continuity lapses, repetitiveness and places where things don't make sense are appreciated.

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"His voice stirred my oldest memories." —_The Lightning Thief_

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Jason stepped down into the hold, balancing carefully on his new splint. He could already feel the ambrosia working. With luck, it would heal before he had to face more giants. Leo and Hazel had pulled out all the walls of the unused stables to make space for the statue that had been won with so much pain. It wasn't exactly dignified, lying on its back, and Jason got the feeling that the stone wasn't meant to support its own weight from this angle, but it would have to do for now.

There was a space between the shield and the floor, just big enough for two teenagers to crawl into, almost high enough for one of them to sit up. Annabeth had said something like "sfee-noid," but Jason hadn't been able to look it up.

Hazel turned her head as he stepped onto the bay doors.

"They're sleeping a lot," he said quietly.

Hazel shook her head. "Only one at a time," she murmured, "never for long."

Not even the coach had objected to the arrangements. He'd gone into full nanny-goat mode the second the two of them had walked out of the House of Hades. Completely unfazed, he'd burst straight into furious activity, ordering Frank to mix regulation rehydration solution and throwing a goaty fit when Frank asked what that was. He'd cleaned the wounds, administered the diluted ambrosia...

...which Percy had pushed away without making eye contact.

"We'll be under way soon. Nico sent word to Thanatos," Jason said quietly. "He said he summoned enough undead to protect the death god from a thousand giants." Hazel nodded. Nico had planned to stay behind himself, rededicate the altar and guard the Doors until they could be moved, but one look at Percy told him that the plan had changed. They'd started this phase of the quest down two of their most powerful members, and they were headed to face Porphyrion _still_ down two of their most powerful members. They couldn't afford to give up Nico.

"You can feel it too, right?" Hazel asked, tipping her head toward the statue.

Jason nodded. In a clearer moment, Annabeth had said that the purity coming off the statue gave her strength. This was the Parthenos, Athena the virgin. It was Annabeth's mother in her purest form. Jason couldn't fully describe what it felt like to be in the same room, but it felt powerful and clean, as if every problem was a math problem, solvable with patience and talent. It was strange to feel something so methodical that was also so unabashedly not Roman, like looking at Aztec geometry diagrams.

"Anyway, I came to relieve you," Jason said. "You were a one-woman army today."

"I'm just glad they're back," said Hazel, covering her blush with a stretch as she got to her feet. "So's Leo. You know how he blamed himself."

"Don't worry about Leo. Just get some rest. We'll need you when we reach the mountain," said Jason. "I'd hate for the whole Prophecy of Seven to come to nothing."

"Eight."

Jason frowned.

"There were eight of us," said Hazel. "Nico makes eight."

In all the chaos, Jason hadn't thought of that. _Seven half-bloods will answer the call.._. Maybe it meant that Nico had been drafted rather than volunteering. Foes had certainly borne arms to the Doors of Death, but the world hadn't fallen to storm or fire. This wasn't over.

Jason settled into the chair that Hazel had left. Coach had grumbled something about three days in Tartarus being quite long enough for two troublemakers to be unsupervised, but even he wasn't worried about funny business.

From here, he could just barely see the knee of Annabeth's jeans. She'd have Riptide in her hands and nothing at all in her eyes. Whatever had become of Percy in the pit, it hadn't hit her. Jason didn't doubt that she'd acquitted herself bravely, but she was like Nico, worn down but clearly herself.

"Percy Jackson," Jason murmured, shaking his head. "How did you pull this one off?"

If they were going to beat the giants, they might need someone to do it again.

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The Argo II was anchored a few hundred feet from shore. Hazel and Leo stayed on deck, ready to fend off any attack. There was no telling how long they'd need to be here.

Annabeth was better, if "better" meant "eating and drinking and stringing two words together." Percy not so much. Neither of them had managed to explain what had happened in the House of Hades, but Jason had a feeling that Nico knew. Deep down, they all knew. Something terrible had happened.

"What if he doesn't come back?" Frank asked. "He looks pretty out of it, and he loves the water. What if he ...forgets?" To come up. To come back.

Jason shook his head. "He won't. Not if Annabeth's right here. He still won't want to go far from her."

Percy's head lifted as the air filled with salt. He looked at Annabeth and she let go without being asked. With heavy steps, he walked toward the ocean. The others hung back. Nico followed, looking over his shoulder to see Annabeth lean heavily against Piper. Jason trailed behind, one eye on the sea and one on the sky.

Percy reached the waterline just as the breakers were rushing back. He kept moving forward ...and the waves did not come. Jason saw him blink in confusion. When the water rushed forward, it parted around Percy's feet, but not neatly, foam churning up around the edges like froth at the mouth of a panicked horse. Percy took two quick steps further out and reached his hand out into an oncoming wave.

The water moved back, like a dog flinching away from a kick. The hiss of the breakers rang like a scream.

Percy let his arm drop to his side, lips parting soundlessly as he stared into space. Nico hurried toward him. "It's Tartarus," he said. "The ocean, anything to do with nature, can feel it in you." Even at this distance, Jason could see Percy's throat move as he swallowed. "I wish I could tell you that it will go away, but the truth is I don't know. What you two did to escape the pit, it's something that no one's tried before."

Percy gave no sign that he'd heard him, staring at the horizon. The grayness beneath his skin seemed to move, as if something evil were swimming in the ocean that had once been his.

"You'll get better, Percy," Nico promised. "I got better." Percy looked at him this time, and Jason knew he was taking in the skin and bone where Nico's wiry body had been, the shame that hadn't left his eyes.

The water cowered around their feet, like a beast that had forgotten its master's voice.

Percy looked away, staring at his hands as if the sight disturbed him. Jason picked out the words for "flesh," "blade" and "home."

That was weird. When people got upset, they lapsed back into their native languages, like when Leo cursed in Spanish. They didn't start speaking five-thousand-year-old Greek with a perfect accent.

Then Percy's whole body shuddered, eyes squeezing shut. The next words were in English, but it seemed like Percy had to force them into shape.

"It got me, Nico. I think it got me."

Nico was silent for a minute. "Not all of you," he said.

Percy swallowed, still staring into the sea.

"Come on," said Jason, touching Percy's arm. "Let's get you back to the Parthenos."

Jason saw a flash of what used to be Percy's discipline-flouting _graecus_ smile, as if he didn't think the statue liked him very much.

Getting the two of them up the rope ladder was harder than getting them down. It took a good few minutes. Jason had time to think. When he finally started to think he was _right_, he figured he had to be going crazy. And there was only one response to that: Full-crew meeting.

"I think they're asleep," Piper said simply, slipping into the chair nearest the door. "Coach is at the helm. We'd better make it quick."

"It's got to be an eidelon, right?" said Frank, looking from Hazel to Nico and back. "They found some kind of god-eidelon in the Underworld and gave it a ride upstairs in exchange for help with the giants." He turned toward Jason and Leo. "I mean, you guys said that even a regular eidelon hurt, and Percy..."

"Looks like seven-layer crap," finished Leo.

"Well I wasn't going to say it like _that_."

"'S cool. I'm here to help."

Jason hadn't taken Annabeth's chair at the head of the table, keeping his regular seat on the left, but over the past few days, all the other seats had turned so that they faced his way. They were looking to him.

Frank's figuring was solid. An eidelon would explain why Percy hadn't reacted to his friends, why he hadn't seemed like Percy. It also explained why he was so badly off. An eidelon was like a hot iron spike. Having a god riding your brain probably hurt like Tartarus wrapped in barbed wire.

"But eidelons are _dead_ humans," Piper was saying. "Gods can't die. Or... Could it have been Pan?"

Percy and Annabeth had both been present when Pan had died. They'd both received part of his spirit. That he would want to help them was a logical, reasonable explanation.

And if the expression on Nico's face was any indicator, it was completely wrong. He and Hazel looked like he was watching Piper and Leo reason their way straight off a cliff.

"Guys?" Jason said, holding up a hand. Piper, Leo and Frank fell silent. He looked from Hazel to Nico and back. "There are no dead gods but Pan, _right?_"

Because there _was_ a way to get enough power to kill immortals. You just had to be willing to do something completely evil. You had to make a sacrifice.

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The last time they had stopped to rest was in a cluster of rocks upstream of Enceladus's camp.

It was as if having so little strength left made some of the ligaments in his mind relax. He was bending in places that would have broken before. He could reach things that he couldn't have reached. As Percy slipped away, he fell easily through the bars on his mind.

In the dream, Percy saw himself, sweaty and dirty, eyes bright and dull at the same time, exactly as if he'd just won a three-day battle. Thalia stood next to him, balancing on her crutches. He felt weak. He felt as if there were less of him here. He told himself it was because the Muses weren't singing, but he knew that wasn't it.

He remembered that night, with the Empire State Building blazing blue. He hadn't been able to process it all. Kronos winning. Luke dying. Annabeth calling on his love for her and Thalia. And underneath it all, the fact that he was _alive_ and that the thing that had hounded him for years was finally _over_. He was alive. He'd _lived_ through his prophecy and the future could hold absolutely anything.

And he wasn't the only one who knew it.

"Is there anyone here who would deny that my son is deserving?" Poseidon said.

Percy's eyes snapped toward his father. Maybe it was all the dreams or because he was so close to gone, but he could tell that Poseidon knew what Zeus was going to offer him: One gift for the most splendid hero since Hercules. Percy would have godhood. He saw his father's fingers flex on the arms of his throne as if he couldn't wait. He _couldn't wait_.

Percy could hardly believe it. At the time, hadn't thought about what Poseidon would want. He hadn't thought about a lot of things. Deep down, "favorite son" or not, he hadn't thought his dad wanted him around _forever_. To live a full, heroic human life, sure, but godhood?

Percy wondered if he'd have made a different call if he'd had time to think about it. He'd faced Zeus and company with his brain still on overdrive.

The wondering lasted about two seconds. Even through the dream, he could feel Annabeth's hands on his arms. And then there was the look on Chris Rodriguez's face when he was claimed after the battle, all the other kids who didn't have to think "undetermined" every time they lined up for breakfast, not to mention all the new campers who'd shown up with stories about sphinxes and Laestrygonians and a hundred other near misses. Yeah, nope. Same decision.

Past-Percy was standing before Zeus. Poseidon looked ..._happy_. He looked like he'd been waiting for this for a long time. He'd had plans, Percy realized. This wasn't a spur of the moment thing. Like Athena had noticed the night of the winter solstice, Poseidon had spent time thinking about the future.

Same decision, but he might have handled it differently.

Technically, cutting this deal had been his finest moment, the minute he'd changed the world, but Percy wasn't sure he could watch. Instead he walked toward Bessie's aquarium. Sure enough, the ophiotaurus could see him.

_You look sick._

Percy smiled, or tried to. It was harder to imagine that he had a face.

_He wants to know_, Bessie said.

"Know? Know what?"

Bessie nodded toward Poseidon, who was watching Past-Percy turn down Zeus's offer.

_They burn you away. Sacrifice you to you. Then you become—_ and it was like Poseidon talking to Triton again, on a level that he couldn't process. Bessie did a little flip. _Then he can see you. But I can see you now._

Percy was confused. "What is it that my dad doesn't know about me?" he asked.

_You are not dead_.

"Yeah, I know that."

_I told him, but he doesn't believe me._

"Why would he think I'm dead? He can see me," Percy pointed to his past self, who'd just gotten to the part about the minor gods. "Do you mean he doesn't know that I'm not dead in Tartarus?"

_Not Tartarus. _Bessie looked sad, so much that Percy wanted to apologize._ I couldn't find you in Tartarus._

"When were you in Tartarus?"

Bessie went still. _After the bad people_.

Percy was confused. "But Grover said you guys came straight here."

_The other bad people_. The ophiotaurus looked somewhere between scared and sad, as if he didn't really believe he was safe. _The ones who took me away._ It made a noise. _It hurt._

Percy reached out, not sure if he should try to touch Bessie through the glass ...if it was glass. "When did somebody hurt you?" he asked, feeling that same, strange feeling that anyone who'd even try was a bigger jerk than Kronos.

_When you were dead._

It was as if everything dropped away. The Olympus in his dream. The Tartarus around his skin. He was in a tunnel of thought with Bessie on the other side.

"What?" he asked.

_You were dead. And so was I_.

.

.

.

Nico didn't seem to want to look at him. Jason was using his best body language, alpha wolf with a perfect accent, but the pack mentality never seemed to work on Nico. It was as if he was only like other humans on the surface, no animal underneath. "They call us half-bloods, but we're not," said Nico. "I got half of what I am from my mother and a lot of the rest from whatever set of human flesh and blood my dad built for himself. We have enough of the gods in us to use Celestial metals and touch ambrosia without burning up, but we're still mostly mortal. We get old like mortals. We die like mortals. Human nature is our nature."

_For most of us_, thought Jason. Nico was different. Maybe Jason was too.

"What we do have is..." Nico's right hand twitched. "Do I have to explain it? You know what I'm talking about." He looked from one face to the next. "Like when Percy says he can feel the ocean. Except with most of us it's more—"

"Sparks," finished Leo. Beside him, Frank was nodding. Piper looked confused but didn't say anything. Jason smiled. Maybe she hadn't realized that not everyone was beautiful on the inside.

"Well Percy figured out how to use his. That little scrap of sea god."

"He's been doing that for years," said Leo. "Clarisse said that he dumped forty tons of toilet water on her head his first week at camp."

"No, I don't mean his normal powers," Nico swallowed hard. "My sister Bianca knew a girl who used to be a Hesperid—watched over the gardens with the golden apples." Jason nodded. The legion had been careful to avoid that place when they'd attacked Mount Orthrys. "The Hunters tell a lot of stories about her. She joined up after her sisters kicked her out. One of the reasons she needed Artemis's help so bad was because she'd lost most of her own power. She found a way to channel her divinity. Instead of keeping it where it belonged, she forged it into a sword. She lent it to someone she thought she could trust, a hero who needed her help." Nico tucked his hands inside his sleeves. "But he never gave it back. He stole her immortality and forgot about her."

"Hercules," said Piper.

"You heard the story?"

"No, it just sounds like something he would do."

"Zoe was almost a goddess before she made that sword," said Nico. "For us, even thinking about it is crazy. No one dumb enough to try it was tough enough to live through it."

"But it's not, like, forbidden or anything," said Leo. "Zeus isn't going to blast him into Percy-bits for trying it, is he? We've got all these stories about how it's bad to try to be like the gods—that kid of Apollo's with the chariot—but they'd _tell_ us if it were forbidden, right?"

"The gods don't tell us what they don't want us to do," said Hazel. "They just expect us to know."

Piper put a hand on Leo's his arm. "I don't think we have to worry about Percy being punished, Leo," she said quietly. Jason nodded. If what had happened on the beach was any sign, there wasn't much Zeus could do to him. Not much that was _worse_ anyway.

"Doing something like that leaves you vulnerable," Nico was saying. "Even using normal powers is dangerous in the pit; it gives Tartarus a way in. Talking. Thinking."

Jason had seen skeletal warriors snap off their own bones to use as weapons. It had made his skin crawl, but this was worse. If the scene at the beach had meant anything, then Percy had had to break something inside himself to win the day, maybe something that couldn't be fixed.

"Could this be what they wanted?" asked Frank. "Could this be Gaea trying to take Percy out of the equation?"

Nico shook his head. "No, if anything, Gaea _wants_ Percy to stay in the game." His face darkened. "It's possible that something else was at work here.

.

.

.

The light was harsh and wild, and he could hear a noise that made the battle for New Rome sound like a tea party.

"To me, Brothers!"

The language was old but he understood it. He understood the rest of the dream even better. Nobody gave off a vibe like a titan. The rest of the battle was still underway: Hyperion was half bogged down in thorny vines. Atlas faced off against a woman in a brown robe who could raise pillars of fire at will. Hera was probably down there too, maybe nagging Krios to death or whatever the heck she was good for.

But here on the bare plateau, the fight was over.

Poseidon was young, younger than Percy had ever seen him. They all were. Hades and Zeus were with him. Their opponent had just dropped his shield.

The face was different, but Percy knew it well. He seemed to exist in three spaces at once, past, present and future, only he didn't have a hero to hide behind this time. Kronos unfiltered.

The gold eyes were calm even his scythe fell from his shaking hands.

"You think you've defeated me, my boys?" his voice was deeper than Luke's, but it still felt like a knife to the frontal lobe. He laughed, but Percy had seen enough bullies dragged off to detention to know a parting shot when he heard one. "Only Fate can truly conquer time. I have my brothers. I have my mortal champions. You will not rule long."

Percy smirked, wishing he could tell Kronos _exactly_ how long he'd have to wait before he could so much as scratch his own nose again. Zeus had similar ideas. He held up his free hand and proto-Backbiter sailed right into it, Avengers-style. He gave the signal and he, Hades and Poseidon all struck at the same time. Any of the three wounds would have been fatal to a human, but Kronos only fell to his knees. When he spoke, it sounded funny, as if he had three voices:

"Hades, my firstborn—"

"Zeus—"

"Poseidon my son—"

Whatever he said to Hades and Zeus, Percy couldn't hear it. When he turned to Poseidon, the words seemed to float on top of the other sounds, like foam on dark waves.

"Poseidon my son, your mother Rhea said that you would have a heart like the ocean. That will be your curse. Something precious to you will be destroyed forever." He winced, one hand going to the trident wound on his chest, "But if the Fates deem that it be recovered, then it will return weak and warped, with poison in its wake, and you will not know what is in your hands until it is utterly gone, taking more with it."

Percy was a little shaken, but Poseidon didn't look scared. Maybe curses could be broken.

Whatever choice words Kronos had saved for Zeus, it looked like he hadn't liked them. He lifted Backbiter, saying, "Enough." Hades's eyes got a little too bright. Then they went to work prepping Kronos for his trip to the Underworld's dustpan.

Percy probably enjoyed this next part more than he should have. This was the creature who'd gotten Beckindorf and Silena and Matthew killed, who'd made Percy's life hell for years. Frankly, Hades could dump him a Cuisinart and set it to extra-fine for all Percy cared. Tartarus was too good for him.

Kronos's last words were the way Percy remembered them: No sound, just the slash of someone else's thoughts stabbing into his head.

_I will return, my dear sons_.

Poseidon spun the trident in his hand. It looked like the weapon was new to him and he thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Percy hadn't noticed Zeus's master bolt, but the smell of ozone meant it had probably seen some action.

"There is more to do, my brothers," said Zeus. "The other titans will fight us, perhaps for centuries. We will need more allies. The sky, the sea, and what lies beneath the earth must all be subdued."

"Three tasks," said Hades.

"Three kingdoms," finished Poseidon.

"We'll draw lots," Zeus said. "Where the earth meets the upper air we'll hold in common."

Poseidon and Hades looked at each other, and Percy remembered that they'd known each other longer than they'd known Zeus. Eventually they both nodded.

Percy suddenly realized why Poseidon didn't seem worried about Kronos's curse. He hadn't been out very long. He didn't have a kingdom or followers or even inventions like horses or islands. The only thing he'd learned to love yet was his freedom, maybe the siblings who'd survived Kronos's belly with him.

He wondered what his father had lost, or if he'd even lost it yet.

Then Tartarus showed him.

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.

.

"So you're saying..." Leo put his wrists on the table, tracing pictures in the air with his fingers, "that Percy ripped off whatever it was that he got from Poseidon and stabbed two guys with it?"

Nico settled uncomfortably in his seat. "Two that we know of."

And it was bad for him. Messing with the part of yourself that came from the gods was probably like trying to do your own heart surgery.

"Why haven't we heard of anyone doing that before?" asked Frank. "Is this the first time anyone's tried it?"

Nico shook his head. "Channeling his essence left holes, places for Tartarus to get in. It won't settle back into place."

Jason processed what Nico had told him, what he was really saying. He was saying that if someone tried to channel their godhood but _wasn't_ in Tartarus when he tried it...

But that wasn't the answer. Well, it was one answer, but not to this question.

"No," said Jason.

"Uh, 'no'?" asked Leo.

Jason leveled his eyes at Nico. "You're not telling us something," he said.

"Jason—" Hazel started.

"I'm not calling him a liar," Jason said. "Everything he's saying is probably true, but he's leaving something out." He leaned forward. "Annabeth looks like she escaped from Tartarus. You look like you escaped from Tartarus. _Percy_ looks like he doesn't know who he is."

"Percy recognized us," said Hazel. "He walked up to Frank right away."

Jason shook his head. Wolf-free or not, he could see Nico caving. His mouth was already open.

.

.

.

Youth was either short or everlasting. He hadn't been a baby for long. Now he was clearly a child, maybe four. It was hard to tell. He had two good legs, pale blue skin and eyes like onyx chips beneath lapis-tinged dark hair. For a second, Percy saw him the way the ophiotaurus would have seen him, a blaze of immortal energy that happened to settle in the shape of a boy.

He was swimming around the courtyard with a little spear. He looked like he was playing the way little kids did, but at the same time, he seemed timeless, as if he understood things about the world that Percy never would. He knew there was a war with the Titans and he knew what that _meant_ in a way that Percy had taken dumbed down and paraphrased. This was a child, but it wasn't a human child, nowhere near. For this kid, the idea of a hand could be a hand. A weapon could be the idea of a weapon.

But even with that, he was like bread that wasn't done cooking. There was something larval about him, something that was still forming. Every day he seemed a little taller, a little stronger, a little more like the true version of himself.

There was a woman clapping her hands. There was a man. When the cyclops guard left, Percy heard Poseidon admit to his queen that he couldn't wait—_couldn't wait_—to see what kind of god their Amphion would become.

"You were the same way with Triton," Amphitrite said, hiding a laugh inside her voice. "Are you going to be like this with all of them?"

Poseidon looked toward her with mock dignity before leaning in to answer, "I hope so." Amphitrite looked away with a blush putting color in her face.

This didn't make sense, not any of it. If Poseidon had another godly son, why hadn't Percy heard of him? Zeus had said that Poseidon married Amphitrite as part of some kind of deal, like an arranged marriage. They were like any two people bantering with each other. Amphitrite's dark eyes glittered whenever she looked Poseidon's way. There was none of the hostility that she'd shown during the battle. There was tension, the kind that Percy didn't like to admit he felt around Annabeth, but it was the fear of breaking something new and delicate, not like walking through a minefield. Amphitrite and Poseidon weren't comfortable together yet, but it looked like she was crazy about him. Triton, Amphion, Amphitrite... He'd have to ask Annabeth about the roots, but were _both_ their kids named after her?

On one level, it was weird to actually watch his dad get all moony with someone who wasn't his mom (and even that would have been pretty awkward), but on another, he had to wonder what the heck had happened to mess things up so badly.

The dream blurred, and Amphion looked older, maybe six. He'd been practicing with a shield, a _real_ one, for the first time.

"Father, when can I go on a quest? To the world above, like First Brother's friends from the camp." That was what he called Triton, Percy remembered. An oracle had said that Poseidon would have many children, and Amphion had just learned "first" and "second."

Poseidon put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Quests are for heroes, Amphion. You are a young god. That means—" Poseidon was still speaking, but the words stopped making sense, as if understanding what he was saying took a part of the brain that he didn't have.

"—whatever fate has in store for you, if you face it with courage, you will make your mother and your brother and me very proud."

Percy's dream went dark for a minute. It was weird to see Poseidon be a normal dad, even a little. Okay, so maybe the real weird was from seeing another kid get to be a normal son. It wasn't that Poseidon didn't have the time. He just hadn't had the time for Percy.

_Shake it off_. That was how it worked, wasn't it? The gods disappoint and heroes get over it, because Poseidon never _said_ he was father of the year and never asked for anything. He'd been honest. Percy could do honest.

_But he said I was his favorite son._ Percy told himself to shut up. He wasn't going to be stupid and jealous. Besides, there was no way to tell how much time was passing or how fast the kid was really growing. This could all have happened in like two days ...and Amphion still would have spent more time with Poseidon than Percy had.

When he looked back, he was holding a lead line and a cluster of kelp, training a young hippocampus to the saddle. Percy heard him ask about what Olympus was like, if he could go with his father for the next council. Poseidon smiled, and Percy could see he was looking forward to it. Demeter was always showing off Persephone. Zeus had Athena and the twins ...and Poseidon thought he'd done _better_. Other than the webbed feet and blue skin, the kid looked pretty normal. Hera might think he was a "deformed creature," but nobody else would. Still, there wouldn't be any visiting Olympus until he was older, and he was getting older. Percy seemed to blink and he seemed like a human boy of eight, of ten, hints of what he would look like when he was grown up showing through his changing bones.

He still looked like a kid when Percy saw him in the sea far outside the palace. He'd snuck away from his sword lesson, gone where the shallower water was really dangerous. Some of the plants could even wrap around a shark and squeeze it until it died, or at least First Brother had told him so.

And they _had_ caught something down here, something that was making funny noises and asking to be freed. Something that needed help. Amphion unknotted stalk from stalk like a hero on a quest.

Poseidon found him outside the field of waving weeds, his armor unhooked and empty on the sea floor as he played with a creature not quite a hippocampus, with a calf's upper body and a long, serpentine tail.

"He came and found me, Father. May I keep him?"

And, though the boy could not hear, _I am the ophiotaurus, lord. He is my protector,_ it said, like a child telling a grownup its age.

.

.

.

"We should kill the beast," Amphitrite had said. "If what Artemis says is correct, then it could give the Titans or a hero of their choosing the power to kill you, my lord."

Poseidon looked past the coral pillars to the courtyard where Amphion was feeding his new ...friend. Innocence delighting in innocence. He slowly shook his head.

"Then let me protect it, Father," said Triton. "He's too young."

Percy could tell what Poseidon was thinking: Young but powerful. He was already becoming powerful. "This is his fate," he said simply. "We can keep the sea bull hidden for now," Poseidon said. "It is still too small to attract much attention." A smirk flickered across his face, "I don't even think my niece knows where it is yet."

"What then?"

"Then Amphion will have to be ready."

Percy watched the kid throw himself into his training. Most boys his age would have found an animal like Bessie distracting, but he finally seemed motivated. At first, the ophiotaurus cowered whenever the weapons came out, but in time it became accustomed to seeing them. It would have to learn to stay calm if it was going to be guarded properly. He learned everything from combat to mapmaking. Some of the more roguish figures among his tutors seemed to be teaching him how to evade a pursuer. Even Triton did not have anything to complain about (until one day when his little brother had finally managed to disarm him during practice). As he mastered the common trident, Amphion's tutors moved him on to the short spear.

"Forgive me for bringing this up, my lord," Triton said carefully.

"There are two people in this ocean who may question me, and you are one of them," said Poseidon.

Triton breathed out. "Do you doubt me, Father?" he asked.

Poseidon looked at Triton as if he'd been expecting a different question. "No," he said. "Your brother is simply better suited to this task. If things with the remaining Titans grow much worse, I will need you commanding our forces."

Triton shook his head. "It's such a vulnerability," he said, watching Bessie weave in and out of the abalone columns. "Letting it live seems like an invitation to Atlas and Krios."

"It chose your brother as its guardian," Poseidon said.

"But we don't have to abide by its choice. I could protect it. Or kill it."

_Jerk_, thought Percy, but after the feeling passed, he could see where Triton was coming from. Bessie was all right as monsters went, but Poseidon definitely outclassed him in the brains department. Why _did_ he get to pick his own guards?

"Why would it would come looking for him when it could have sought out any of a dozen more powerful protectors?" asked Triton. "Its innocence is so potent that it can cut through immortality. Seeing into souls is nothing to a creature like this. I wouldn't be surprised if it can even read mortals. It chose Amphion because it knows any of the rest of us would have killed it by now. He's—" Triton's hands clenched on his spear. "I know it's usually a virtue, but he is _too_ loyal. It prevents him from seeing the larger course of events."

"Your brother may not see the larger course, but I have," said Poseidon. "Loyalty breeds loyalty."

Triton only looked confused.

"The sea bull is nearly helpless now, but it will not remain so," Poseidon explained. "The power conferred by the sacrifice also comes from burned potential." The sea god cracked a sly smile. "Imagine a monster the equal of Typhon but loyal to Olympus," he put a hand on Triton's shoulder, "to _our family_," and Percy knew he didn't mean Zeus. "Your brother can make that come to pass," he said. "Now its innocence responds to his. In time its strength will respond to his strength. It will grow more powerful as he does."

Percy tried to imagine Bessie full-grown with heavy horns and stamping hooves, as dangerous as the Tripled Death. A sea minotaur. Bargaining chip, nothing. This changed the whole game. _If_ the kid could pull it off.

"You are all I could want in a son and heir," Poseidon said to Triton. "The ocean is yours if I should ever be defeated. But _this_ fate is not for you."

For a second, Percy felt cold, watching the jealousy play off Triton's features, but it looked like Amphion wasn't going to go the way of the sea-mortal. Eventually, he nodded. "Thank you for sharing your reasons with me, Father," he answered.

The dream blurred. Things were changing. There was what was clearly an Iris message. Percy picked up the words "Hyperion" and "Atlas." Poseidon and Amphitrite were speaking intently. In the distance, Amphion was practicing coordinated moves with guards in the practice yard. It looked like he wasn't being sent to protect Bessie alone, at least.

Poseidon and Delphin were on a rise outside the palace. A cyclops assistant was holding up a map. They seemed to be discussing defenses. Amphion was nearby, keeping one eye on the currents and the other on Bessie as he grazed in the sea of kelp. Four fully grown mer-guards hovered at attention.

Amphion looked older now, maybe thirteen. He reminded Percy of Nico, the way you had to make yourself notice that he was just a kid. There was a stillness in his eyes that most people didn't get until they were older. Or until they'd lived through something big.

The serpent appeared out of nowhere, wide mouth like a crocodile and gills like a shark. A guard called out a warming and was knocked aside as the monster made straight for Bessie. Amphion shouted something that was probably the guard's name. Time seemed to slow down. Poseidon was present, trident in hand, the water around its tines already boiling with power as he moved to level it at the threat.

And a flash of pure blue light moved in an arc as the sea serpent's head separated itself from its body.

It was a long moment before anyone spoke.

"How did you do that?" the cyclops asked simply.

Amphion was touching the ophiotaurus on the head, but it was still grazing happily, as if it hadn't thought it was ever in danger. "With courage," he said to the cyclops, "like my father told me."

The dream re-formed back in the palace practice yard. There was another flash of blue light, and a seastone dummy had suddenly split in two.

"What is he _doing?_" Poseidon asked in an intent whisper.

"I..." Amphitrite shook her head. "He seems to be focusing his power, aspects of himself,"

"But the warriors who were with us weren't harmed," Poseidon said, half in a question.

"No," Amphitrite agreed, "it's not as if he's appearing in his true form."

Poseidon's fingers drummed against the shaft of his trident.

"Is it dangerous to him?" he asked.

"I expect it is, my lord," she answered. "I've heard of Titans' children externalizing their immortality, making tools and weapons. They become vulnerable if those objects are ever stolen." She watched her son practice again.

Amphion narrowed his eyes at his next target, turning his head to the side. He moved, and Percy felt the kid's body, power and thoughts all line up to a single edge. This time, the dummy disintegrated entirely. The blue glow sank back into Amphion's form as if nothing had happened. If this was Amphion's weakness, it didn't last long.

"I've told him to stop but he won't listen," Amphitrite told her husband.

"He never did care to be told, did he?" Poseidon asked with almost a smile. Water liked to be free. "This ability is part of who he truly is, Amphitrite. It comes from his devotion to his duty, his loyalty to his parents. He will not want to forgo it and even with the danger I'm not certain he should."

"You could order it," Amphitrite said quietly. "He's a lesser god in your own domain. His will is subject to yours. You could tell him to never use his spirit as a blade."

"I can't order my son to deny his nature," Poseidon answered.

"Yes you can," Amphitrite insisted. "He's too young. We have to protect him."

On one level, that sounded pretty weird, like chuck-Percy-in-the-Lotus-until-after-the-prophecy weird. He could see where she was coming from, though. Even goddesses could worry about their kids getting hurt.

Percy watched Amphion turn another dummy to silt. It was definitely the same thing that Triton's friend had done the day he'd died. In fact, it was... It reminded Percy of what he'd done the day he'd accidentally woken Typhon. But Percy and the hero had been like little kids banging on the piano keys just to make a loud noise. Amphion not only knew he was playing an instrument but kept doing that thing where you hit five of the exact right notes so that they sound awesome together.

Even through the dream, the tiny spot of energy inside him hummed. It had always been there, but until now, Percy hadn't known that it _did_ anything. Deep down, he knew it was the best part of him, pure and perfect. Everything else was like the layers of a pearl, protecting it. That was what Tartarus was trying to do; get inside him, peel it all away, solve the labyrinth called Percy and get to the blue candy center.

Poseidon exhaled and Percy realized he'd been waiting for this ...or maybe not _this_, but he'd been waiting for something.

"I will call an emergency meeting with my brothers and sisters. I will tell them that we've found the Bane of Olympus." Percy remembered what that meant. Amphion would take the ophiotaurus and go on the run, maybe until after the Titans were defeated. Amphitrite looked sad. "It's that or kill it."

Amphitrite looked from Amphion and back three times before she spoke. "He's too young," she said finally.

Poseidon turned his head. Percy wondered if this was the first time she'd ever flat-out disagreed with him out loud.

"He's ready," Poseidon told her.

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.

.

Percy watched Amphion put on his armor and say a formal goodbye. Poseidon spoke a blessing. Amphitrite hugged him, and Percy could feel all the heavy months since he'd seen his own mother. A small group of mermen seemed to be coming with him. There were no bead necklaces, but they had a camper vibe, probably Athos and Bythos' best graduates. They would have jumped at the chance. This was the quest of a lifetime. They all looked older than Amphion, but they were treating him like Percy treated Artemis and Hestia, like they knew he could turn them into sand fleas. To Amphion's credit, he wasn't being a jerk about it, giving orders that needed to be given and nothing else. It was like when Percy had found himself a commander in the defense of Manhattan. The pressure was on and there was no room for gloating.

"These mortals have my favor," Poseidon was saying. "Now you must give them yours. As heroes, they can challenge opponents whom you would otherwise have to spare, weaklings who could still report back to their masters." Amphion nodded, and Percy knew that Poseidon had already told him this, many times. Amphion knew the laws that confined him like Percy knew the weight of Riptide in his hand.

"Start with the winding canyons. From there, you can find passage all the way to the Atlantic if you need to. Keep moving. Don't discuss your route with your followers until it is necessary. Our enemies have ways of overhearing. Abandon your entourage only if you must." He handed something to Amphion, who seemed to recognize it. To Percy, it just looked like an oversized pearl.

"It's like First Brother's," he said, turning it over in his wiry fingers.

Poseidon closed his hand over Amphion's. "I'll know where you are," he said, "but you must leave this behind too if need be. Protect the ophiotaurus until the danger is past, and then return."

"I will do my duty, Father," Amphion promised. "I never dreamed that I'd get to do something that mattered this much. I won't let you down." He turned to Bessie. "Ready for a long swim, friend?" he asked. The ophiotaurus perked up like a Labrador who'd been told they were going to the park.

Poseidon watched them go. He'd projected confidence the whole time he'd been talking to Amphion, but now he let doubt show. He was a lot less sure than he let on. He moved to touch Amphitrite on the shoulder, but she pulled away, rubbing her hands against her arms, as if she could suddenly feet the cold.

The dream kept moving from place to place. Sometimes Percy saw Triton leading mermen or cyclopes against enemy monsters. He guessed that just because Oceanus was neutral didn't mean that the Titans didn't have any say in what happened underwater. Ceto and Phorcys probably had a hand in it. He sometimes saw flashes of his father, facing off against Titans, usually with Apollo or Ares. He saw Amphion moving from hidden place to hidden place with the ophiotaurus. One time he and his friends had to kill a nest of sea serpents before setting up camp. Another time it was a squad of enemy cyclopes. Amphion turned five of them to dust before they could send a message off. His followers got the rest. They'd been on the mission a while now, long enough to learn each other's moves, long enough for Ersa and Arkas to build up some serious tension. They were worse than Silena and Beckindorf. Percy couldn't tell why those two didn't just get together already.

Then things seemed to change. Percy recognized Atlas, minus the colossal neck cramp, with Krios, horns and all, by his left shoulder. They were standing on a rocky beach, talking to someone with snakes for feet. Percy felt a chill in his bones before he realized it couldn't possibly be Polybotes. He'd been born later, and this man was only tall enough to look the titans in the eye. A lesser giant, maybe? Kronos had said that he had other champions.

The giant bowed in the old way, touching his fist to his forehead as he dropped to one knee. Then Atlas handed him something the size of a soccer ball, and the giant turned and walked straight into the waves. Whoever he was, he could function underwater. Far away, Amphion raised his head, as if he'd heard something.

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There was a battle in a hollow space between two hills. Krios was leading what looked like a thousand strange creatures that seemed almost human one minute, covered with claws and bristles the next. One of them would scream, showing tusks like a boar's, then pick up a spear in meaty human hands. Percy could see Ares in his chariot, Athena beside him. For once, Zeus's two deadliest children seemed to be in full agreement. Apollo and Artemis were shooting gold and silver arrows from a flying chariot. Percy could also see Poseidon with his trident and Hermes with his winged sandals. Hermes had a rakish grin on his face, and why not? They were winning.

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It was as if Percy was dreaming two dreams at once. Beneath the ocean, the strange half-giant was sniffing the current. He closed his eyes and heard a soft mooing noise and a gentle voice telling it to be quiet.

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Back on land, Apollo called out, "Surrender, Lord of Constellations. Save yourself the pain that Skyfather Zeus has planned for your brothers!"

"Your golden tongue means nothing to me, boy," Krios spat back, "save that it might look good with a nail through it!" but there was a shadow on his face, as if things weren't going the way he'd expected.

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The giant was striding through shallow water toward a set of reefs. Percy recognized it, even though he'd never seen it before. It would be like a maze, like a labyrinth. The razor coral would keep most sentient beings away. The monsters of the deep would fear the light, warmth and low pressure. This was as good a hiding place as any.

Shadowed in the coral, Amphion made a swift gesture with his hand. Two of the demigods hurried off, weapons ready. Amphion motioned to Bessie, now with the little stubs of horns on his head, who swam into a small crevice as the others took up defensive positions. Amphion's eyes were intent as he waited either for his scouts to return or for the enemy to show itself.

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One arrow glanced off Krios's helmet, but the next scored him in the eye. The largest of his monstrous troops turned to dust on the tines of Poseidon's trident. Athena dismounted from Ares' chariot and raised her spear, but the battle was nearly over. By the time Krios pulled the shaft from his head, there were three blades at his throat.

"I think you hit him, little sister," Apollo goaded Artemis, who rolled her eyes.

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Ersa shrieked a warning before the giant threw her against the razor coral. Arkas howled in fury and charged him, ignoring Amphion's calls to wait. "Attack pattern sigma!" he shouted to the rest of his guards.

"I do not fear you!" called the giant. "I will have the honor of slaying the upstarts and rule beside the titans when they return to power."

"The waves will be your only gravestone, breather," Amphion said darkly. Like any land creature underwater, the giant wasn't used to fighting in three dimensions. Two of the demigods came at him from above while the god himself bore down on him, blue light coalescing in the shape of a blade.

"See how Lord Atlas honors his servants!" the giant hissed, holding up the nastiest chunk of metal that Percy had ever seen, halfway between a spear and a sword, shaped to move easily underwater. He suddenly knew it was telkhine work, and he no longer had any conflicted feelings about the seal-demons being thrown into Tartarus. Just the sight of it made his skin crawl, and he didn't even have skin at the moment. It had taken more than a quenching in blood to forge that thing. One strike and Arkas's strong body shriveled into weeds, soul severed.

While Amphion was still gaping at his friend, the giant pulled something from his sleeve. Percy recognized a human-like skull, polished smooth and carved with figures like the ones that had lined Kronos's casket. The giant crushed it in his hand and a burst of harsh white light filled the reef.

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"Atlas!" Krios moaned. "He said... He said it would only be the sea god and the archer girl." Artemis raised an eyebrow.

"It seems your brother thought he had no need of you, Krios," said Athena. "He gave you to us because he preferred not to dispose of you himself."

"No..." Krios hissed in pain. "No, damn him and his plans. Fool thinks he's Kronos. I was—" he closed his eyes. "Meant to distract you." He looked straight at Poseidon. "Distract _him_."

Everyone turned to look at the Poseidon. "What is he talking about?" asked Hermes.

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Hyperion stood beside the giant, blazing with wild sunlight. Rows of bubbles flowed up from the bone shards at his feet, allowing him to walk and speak normally. "Not my favorite way to travel," he commented, drawing his sword, "but your cursed father could have tracked me otherwise."

One of the demigods moved to strike, but Amphion threw up a hand.

"Leave him to me! He can't attack you first!"

Hyperion laughed, harsh light flaring as he did. "Yes, take me on yourself, little Amphion. Ten of you would be no match for me." Percy wasn't sure he was wrong. Thick droplets of golden ichor already floated near a cut on Amphion's face. Doubt flickered in his eyes. The giant was busy with the demigods, but it didn't look like it would stay a contest for long.

"Just give me the beast, godling. I'll only take it from you," the titan gloated. "I am more than the sun itself. Defeat at my hand is no shame. Live to see the sixth age." He smiled. "What difference could you possibly make?"

_Wrong thing to say, buddy_, thought Percy. Hyperion got a spirit slash to his left arm for his trouble. Amphion advanced, but Percy could see he was outmatched. These were the desperate moves of someone too stupid to accept that he was beaten. For the first time, Percy admitted that he liked the kid. Bessie had taste.

"The fifth age," Amphion said between strikes, "will outlast all memory of you!" and the small god slipped inside his enemy's guard just like Percy had seen Annabeth do a dozen times. The pockets of air that kept the titan's light from quenching threw off his aim, but he still stabbed once at Hyperion's sword arm before scoring his abdomen. For a second, the blazing blue light glowed from behind the titan's eyes, as if it were burning him from the inside. The giant had knocked out the last mer-guard and took a swing at Amphion with his spear, but Amphion severed it, head from shaft. Something about it flared and went out, like the filament in a lightbulb. The giant wouldn't be using that thing again. Hyperion had switched his weapon to his left hand and moved to bring it down on Amphion, but he dodged, and the blow struck the giant in the shoulder instead. A better swimmer than either of them, Amphion twisted in the water and shot out of the way.

The giant was down but not out. It was dazed and in pain but already moving. Percy saw to his dismay that its wounds were knitting.

"Ophiotaurus, to me!" called Amphion. Bessie poked its muzzle out of a gap in the corals. "Hurry, friend, we're leaving fast."

The giant gave something between a roar and a growl, and Percy realized that he already knew how this ended. Its magical weapon gone, he drew an ordinary spear.

"For Kronos!" it called, launching it through the current.

On reflex, Amphion moved to protect Bessie, blue sword flaring to life, but the ophiotaurus gave an animal scream as the bronze spearhead nicked the flesh of its back before striking Amphion high in the chest.

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Apollo was the first one to figure it out.

"Uncle," he said. "Perhaps you should contact—"

"_I know_," hissed Poseidon, who suddenly had a large pearl in his hand, a match to the one he'd given Amphion. He twisted it once and then disappeared.

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Hours had passed, at least. The sunlight was coming from the west. And it seemed to be laughing.

"What happened here?" Triton was saying, looking almost in wonder at Arkas's withered body.

"Bad telkhines," muttered a cyclops in lieutenant's armor as it poked at what was left of the wicked sword-spear. "We will catch them and throw them in Tartarus." Two of his fellows were wrapping something in a seaweed cloth embroidered with tridents, but it couldn't be Amphion. It was too small.

Triton looked at the circle left in the sand from Hyperion's bubble. The current had warped it, but it was still visible. "Titan magic," he said. "One of them must have been here in person."

Poseidon was looking at something that Percy couldn't see. Nearby, droplets of blood, dark and reddish, not ichor, floated undissolved in the still water. Triton frowned, reaching toward it with two fingers.

Without looking, Poseidon grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back, hard enough to bruise. "Don't touch it," he said in a dark hiss.

Triton's eyes cleared. He and Percy realized what had happened at the same time. The spear had gone _through_ the ophiotaurus and hit Amphion with a full dose of innocent blood.

"Father, we need to contact the others," Triton was saying. "_Father_." He looked away, closing his eyes against real grief. He gestured to one of the cyclopes, who produced a prism. There was just enough light in the shallow water. "Goddess, accept my offering. Skyfather Zeus. Olympus."

Poseidon hadn't moved an inch.

"The ophiotaurus has been lost. Seek redress immediately and—" He closed his eyes. "—and my brother is dead."

Percy moved up beside Poseidon, watching his father's face from the side. For once, he wasn't hard to read. He could see all the way through the waves to the rocks underneath, and the depth of Poseidon terrified him.

"It's all right," Percy said. No one could hear him, so it didn't matter if he said the wrong thing. "Well, it's not all right, but..." Percy sat down next to him. "He's going to Elysium," he said, and then with a small laugh, "but he's not staying long. Amphion had guts. He'll take rebirth. He's going to go for three. You might even see him a—"

Then it all came together.

"That's what this was all about?" Percy asked. "The ...guy, Triton's friend." He looked down at the shroud with Amphion's still body. "That was him, wasn't it? He wanted to be a hero, to go on quests..." And there had been _something_ about him, something that only Poseidon, Triton and Amphitrite had recognized.

The River Lethe was supposed to wipe out souls' memories so that they could start new lives, but something of Amphion had stuck. It had taken thousands of years, but he'd made it back. Percy shook his head. Was that guy a complete badass at _everything_?

And Poseidon had only figured it out _after_ Triton had killed him. What a mindjob. Percy's estimation of his father's strength went way up. That was what all that "you will never allow your mother to learn of this" had been. If Poseidon had wanted to hurt his wife or first son, all he'd have had to do was tell them what had really happened. Instead, he'd been carrying all of it alone this whole time.

Percy exhaled. When Kronos dropped a curse on someone, he didn't mess around. It was like a steamroller, flattening its target and anything in the way. Percy wouldn't have wished this on anyone, heck, _not even_ Kronos.

"Father," Triton said quietly. "Father, we have to go. Zeus will probably send an eagle, but you have to help them."

"You're right," he answered, eyes still on Amphion.

He unwrapped just enough of the shroud so that he could see his son's face. He unwrapped just enough of the shroud so that he could see his son's face. The body already seemed to be halfway gone, only an echo of the god who'd imagined it. Poseidon touched a hand to his forehead and whispered something in Greek. A final blessing, like the one Hermes had given to Luke. And then, for the briefest moment, he smiled. For a second, Percy smiled too. It was a warm, golden feeling.

A warm, golden feeling.

The touch of a hand on his forehead.

The bottom fell out of the world. Percy wanted to stagger away, but he couldn't move.

"Bring the body to the palace," Poseidon was instructing two of the cyclopes. "Tell them to prepare for a funeral. Tell the queen—" Poseidon stopped. The cyclopes watched expectantly, but he didn't say anything else.

"No..." Percy said.

That was _his_ smile. That was his memory.

"No," said Percy. "No, that isn't right. Dad—" Even in the dream, he could feel his heart pounding. "_That isn't me_."

For years, Percy had been sure that Poseidon knew him when he was a baby. That was the only explanation.

"Triton, have scouts search the area in case they have not yet reached land."

"Yes, Father."

Percy had remembered that smile.

"You can't be serious!" Percy shouted as Poseidon and Triton started to move away, leaving him alone in the fading light.

_I'm Percy Jackson. I'm from Manhattan. I was never a god. My mother is Sally Jackson. My father—_ Percy swallowed hard.

_My father thinks I used to be his favorite son._

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Remember, the harpies have been given permission to eat anyone who posts untagged spoilers.

drf24 k at columbia dot edu


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